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Getting Started

Installation

There are multiple ways to get KICS up and running:

Docker

KICS is available as a Docker image and can be used as follows:

To scan a directory/file on your host you have to mount it as a volume to the container and specify the path on the container filesystem with the -p KICS parameter (see Scan Command Options section below)

docker pull checkmarx/kics:latest
docker run -t -v "{path_to_host_folder_to_scan}":/path checkmarx/kics scan -p /path -o "/path/"

You can see the list of available tags in dockerhub

ℹ️ UBI Based Images

When using UBI8 based image, the KICS process will run under the kics user and kics group with default UID=1000 and GID=1000, when using bind mount to share host files with the container, the UID and GID can be overriden to match current user with the -u flag that overrides the username:group or UID:GID. e.g:

docker run -it -u $UID:$GID -v $PWD:/path checkmarx/kics:ubi8 scan -p /path/assets/queries/dockerfile -o /path -v

Another option is rebuilding the dockerfile providing build arguments e.g: --build-arg UID=999 --build-arg GID=999 --build-arg KUSER=myuser --build-arg KUSER=mygroup

Build from Sources

  1. Download and install Go 1.16 (1.22 recommended) or higher from https://golang.org/dl/.
  2. Clone the repository: 
    git clone https://github.com/Checkmarx/kics.git

  3. Build the binaries: 

    cd kics
go mod vendor
make build

    or 

    cd kics
go mod vendor
LINUX/MAC: go build -o ./bin/kics cmd/console/main.go
WINDOWS: go build -o ./bin/kics.exe cmd/console/main.go (make sure to create the bin folder)
    4. Kick a scan! 
    ./bin/kics scan -p '<path-of-your-project-to-scan>' --report-formats json -o ./results

Scan Examples

Scan a directory

docker run -t -v {path_to_host_folder_to_scan}:/path checkmarx/kics:latest scan -p /path -o "/path/"

Scan a single file

docker run -t -v {path_to_host_folder}:/path checkmarx/kics:latest scan -p /path/{filename}.{extension} -o "/path/"

Scan Example

Next Steps