falco

Released 2019-09-26

Major Changes

• Same as v0.17.0

Minor Changes

• Same as v0.17.0

Bug Fixes

• All in v0.17.0
• Fix a build problem for pre-built kernel probes. [draios/sysdig#1471]

Rule Changes

• Same as v0.17.0

Released 2019-07-31

Major Changes

• The set of supported platforms has changed. Switch to a reorganized builder image that uses Centos 7 as a base. As a result, falco is no longer supported on Centos 6. The other supported platforms should remain the same [#719]

Minor Changes

• When enabling rules within the falco engine, use rule substrings instead of regexes. [#743]

• Additional improvements to the handling and display of rules validation errors [#744] [#747]

Bug Fixes

• Fix a problem that would cause prevent container metadata lookups when falco was daemonized [#731]

• Allow rule priorites to be expressed as lowercase and a mix of lower/uppercase [#737]

Rule Changes

• Fix a parentheses bug with the shell_procs macro [#728]

• Allow additional containers to mount sensitive host paths [#733] [#736]

• Allow additional containers to truncate log files [#733]

• Fix false positives with the Write below root rule on GKE [#739]

Released 2019-07-16

Major Changes

• Clean up error reporting to provide more meaningful error messages along with context when loading rules files. When run with -V, the results of the validation ("OK" or error message) are sent to standard output. [#708]

• Improve rule loading performance by optimizing lua parsing paths to avoid expensive pattern matches. [#694]

• Bump falco engine version to 4 to reflect new fields ka.useragent, others. [#710] [#681]

• Add Catch2 as a unit testing framework. This will add additional coverage on top of the regression tests using Avocado. [#687]

Minor Changes

• Add SYSDIG_DIR Cmake option to specify location for sysdig source code when building falco. [#677] [#679] [#702]

• New field ka.useragent reports the useragent from k8s audit events. [#709]

• Add clang formatter for C++ syntax formatting. [#701] [#689]

• Partial changes towards lua syntax formatting. No particular formatting enforced yet, though. [#718]

• Partial changes towards yaml syntax formatting. No particular formatting enforced yet, though. [#714]

• Add cmake syntax formatting. [#703]

• Token bucket unit tests and redesign. [#692]

• Update github PR template. [#699]

• Fix PR template for kind/rule-*. [#697]

Bug Fixes

• Remove an unused cmake file. [#700]

• Misc Cmake cleanups. [#673]

• Misc k8s install docs improvements. [#671]

Rule Changes

• Allow k8s.gcr.io/kube-proxy image to run privileged. [#717]

• Add runc to the list of possible container entrypoint parents. [#712]

• Skip Source RFC 1918 addresses when considering outbound connections. [#685]

• Add additional user_XXX placeholder macros to allow for easy customization of rule exceptions. [#685]

• Let weaveworks programs change namespaces. [#685]

• Add additional openshift images. [#685]

• Add openshift as a k8s binary. [#678]

• Add dzdo as a binary that can change users. [#678]

• Allow azure/calico binaries to change namespaces. [#678]

• Add back trusted_containers list for backport compatibility [#675]

• Add mkdirat as a syscall for mkdir operations. [#667]

• Add container id/repository to rules that can work with containers. [#667]

Released 2019-06-12

Major Changes

• None.

Minor Changes

• None.

Bug Fixes

• Fix kernel module compilation for kernels < 3.11 [#sysdig/1436]

Rule Changes

• None.

Released 2019-06-12

Major Changes

• New documentation and process handling around issues and pull requests. [#644] [#659] [#664] [#665]

Minor Changes

• None.

Bug Fixes

• Fix compilation of eBPF programs on COS (used by GKE) [#sysdig/1431]

Rule Changes

• Rework exceptions lists for Create Privileged Pod, Create Sensitive Mount Pod, Launch Sensitive Mount Container, Launch Privileged Container rules to use separate specific lists rather than a single "Trusted Containers" list. [#651]

Released 2019-06-07

Major Changes

• Drop unnecessary events at the kernel level instead of userspace, which should improve performance [#635]

Minor Changes

• Add instructions for k8s audit support in >= 1.13 [#608]

• Fix security issues reported by GitHub on Anchore integration [#592]

• Several docs/readme improvements [#620] [#616] [#631] [#639] [#642]

• Better tracking of rule counts per ruleset [#645]

Bug Fixes

• Handle rule patterns that are invalid regexes [#636]

• Fix kernel module builds on newer kernels [#646] [#sysdig/1413]

Rule Changes

• New rule Launch Remote File Copy Tools in Container could be used to identify exfiltration attacks [#600]

• New rule Create Symlink Over Sensitive Files can help detect attacks like [CVE-2018-15664] [#613] [#637]

• Let etcd-manager write to /etc/hosts. [#613]

• Let additional processes spawned by google-accounts-daemon access sensitive files [#593]

• Add Sematext Monitoring & Logging agents to trusted k8s containers [#594]

• Add additional coverage for Netcat Remote Code Execution in Container rule. [#617]

• Fix egrep typo. [#617]

• Allow Ansible to run using Python 3 [#625]

• Additional Write below etc exceptions for nginx, rancher [#637] [#648] [#652]

• Add rules for running with IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service [#634]

Released 2019-05-13

Major Changes

• Actions and alerts for dropped events: Falco can now take actions, including sending alerts/logging messages, and/or even exiting Falco, when it detects dropped system call events. [#561] [#571]

• Support for Containerd/CRI-O: Falco now supports containerd/cri-o containers. [#585] [#591] [#599] [#sysdig/1376] [#sysdig/1310]

• Perform docker metadata fetches asynchronously: When new containers are discovered, fetch metadata about the container asynchronously, which should significantly reduce the likelihood of dropped system call events. [#sysdig/1326] [#550] [#570]

• Better syscall event performance: improve algorithm for reading system call events from kernel module to handle busy event streams [#sysdig/1372]

• HTTP Output: Falco can now send alerts to http endpoints directly without having to use curl. [#523]

• Move Kubernetes Response Engine to own repo: The Kubernetes Response Engine is now in its own github repository. [#539]

• Updated Puppet Module: An all-new puppet module compatible with puppet 4 with a smoother installation process and updated package links. [#537] [#543] [#546]

• RHEL-based falco image: Provide dockerfiles that use RHEL 7 as the base image instead of debian:unstable. [#544]

Minor Changes

• ISO-8601 Timestamps: Add the ability to write timestamps in ISO-8601 w/ UTC, and use this format by default when running falco in a container [#518]

• Docker-based builder/tester: You can now build Falco using the falco-builder docker image, and run regression tests using the falco-tester docker image. [#522] [#584]

• Several small docs changes to improve clarity and readibility [#524] [#540] [#541] [#542]

• Add instructions on how to enable K8s Audit Logging for kops [#535]

• Add a "stale issue" bot that marks and eventually closes old issues with no activity [#548]

• Improvements to sample K8s daemonset/service/etc files [#562]

Bug Fixes

• Fix regression that broke json output [#581]

• Fix errors when building via docker from MacOS [#582]

Rule Changes

• Tag rules using Mitre Attack Framework: Add tags for all relevant rules linking them to the MITRE Attack Framework. We have an associated blog post. [#575] [#578]

• New rules for additional use cases: New rules Schedule Cron Jobs, Update Package Repository, Remove Bulk Data from Disk, Set Setuid or Setgid bit, Detect bash history deletion, Create Hidden Files or Directories look for additional common follow-on activity you might see from an attacker. [#578] [#580]

• Allow docker's "exe" (usually part of docker save/load) to write to many filesystem locations [#552]

• Let puppet write below /etc [#563

• Add new user_known_write_root_conditions, user_known_non_sudo_setuid_conditions, and user_known_write_monitored_dir_conditions macros to allow those rules to be easily customized in user rules files [#563] [#566]

• Better coverage and exceptions for rancher [#559]

• Allow prometheus to write to its conf directory under etc [#564]

• Better coverage and exceptions for openshift/related tools [#567] [#573]

• Better coverage for cassandra/kubelet/kops to reduce FPs [#551]

• Better coverage for docker, openscap to reduce FPs [#573]

• Better coverage for fluentd/jboss to reduce FPs [#590]

• Add ash (Alpine Linux-related shell) as a shell binary [#597]

Released 2019-02-06

Major Changes

• Rules versioning support: The falco engine and executable now have an engine version that represents the fields they support. Similarly, rules files have an optional required_engine_version: NNN object that names the minimum engine version required to read that rules file. Any time the engine adds new fields, event sources, etc, the engine version will be incremented, and any time a rules file starts using new fields, event sources, etc, the required engine version will be incremented. [#492]

• Allow SSL for K8s audit endpoint/embedded webserver [#471]

• Add stale issues bot that automatically flags old github issues as stale after 60 days of inactivity and closes issues after 67 days of inactivity. [#500]

• Support bundle: When run with --support, falco will print a json object containing necessary information like falco version, command line, operating system information, and falco rules files contents. This could be useful when reporting issues. [#517]

Minor Changes

• Support new third-party library dependencies from open source sysdig. [#498]

• Add CII best practices badge. [#499]

• Fix kernel module builds when running on centos as a container by installing gcc 5 by hand instead of directly from debian/unstable. [#501]

• Mount /etc when running as a container, which allows container to build kernel module/ebpf program on COS/Minikube. [#475]

• Improved way to specify the source of generic event objects [#480]

• Readability/clarity improvements to K8s Audit/K8s Daemonset READMEs. [#503]

• Add additional RBAC permissions to track deployments/daemonsets/replicasets. [#514]

Bug Fixes

• Fix formatting of nodejs examples README [#502]

Rule Changes

• Remove FPs for Launch Sensitive Mount Container rule [#509]

• Update Container rules/macros to use the more reliable container.image.{repository,tag} that always return the repository/tag of an image instead of container.image, which may not for some docker daemon versions. [#513]

Released 2019-01-16

Major Changes

Minor Changes

• Unbuffer outputs by default. This helps make output readable when used in environments like K8s. [#494]

• Improved documentation for running Falco within K8s and getting K8s Audit Logging to work with Minikube and Falco as a Daemonset within K8s. [#496]

• Fix AWS Permissions for Kubernetes Response Engine [#465]

• Tighten compilation flags to include -Wextra and -Werror [#479]

• Add k8s.ns.name to outputs when -pk argument is used [#472]

• Remove kubernetes-response-engine from system:masters [#488]

Bug Fixes

• Ensure -pc/-pk only apply to syscall rules and not k8s_audit rules [#495]

• Fix a potential crash that could occur when using the falco engine and rulesets [#468]

• Fix a regression where format output options were mistakenly removed [#485]

Rule Changes

• Fix FPs related to calico and writing files below etc [#481]

• Fix FPs related to apt-config/apt-cache, apk [#490]

• New rules Launch Package Management Process in Container, Netcat Remote Code Execution in Container, Lauch Suspicious Network Tool in Container look for host-level network tools like netcat, package management tools like apt-get, or network tool binaries being run in a container. [#490]

• Fix the inbound and outbound macros so they work with sendto/recvfrom/sendmsg/recvmsg. [#470]

• Fix FPs related to prometheus/openshift writing config below /etc. [#470]

Released 2018-11-09

Major Changes

• Support for K8s Audit Events : Falco now supports K8s Audit Events as a second stream of events in addition to syscalls. For full details on the feature, see the wiki.

• Transparent Config/Rule Reloading: On SIGHUP, Falco will now reload all config files/rules files and start processing new events. Allows rules changes without having to restart falco [#457] [#432]

Minor Changes

• The reference integration of falco into a action engine now supports aws actions like lambda, etc. [#460]

• Add netcat to falco docker images, which allows easier integration of program outputs to external servers [#456] [#433]

Bug Fixes

• Links cleanup related to the draios/falco -> falcosecurity/falco move [#447]

• Properly load/unload kernel module when the falco service is started/stopped [#459] [#418]

Rule Changes

• Better coverage (e.g. reduced FPs) for critical stack, hids systems, ufw, cloud-init, etc. [#445]

• New rules Launch Package Management Process in Container, Netcat Remote Code Execution in Container, and Lauch Suspicious Network Tool in Container look for running various suspicious programs in a container. [#461]

• Misc changes to address false positives in GKE, Istio, etc. [#455] [#439]

Released 2018-09-11

Bug Fixes

• Fig regression in libcurl configure script [#416]

v0.12.0

Released 2018-09-11

Major Changes

• Improved IPv6 Support to fully support use of IPv6 addresses in events, connections and filters [#sysdig/1204]

• Ability to associate connections with dns names: new filterchecks fd.*ip.name allow looking up the DNS name for a connection's IP address. This can be used to identify or restrict connections by dns names e.g. evt.type=connect and fd.sip.name=github.com. [#412] [#sysdig/1213]

• New filterchecks user.loginuid and user.loginname can be used to match the login uid, which stays consistent across sudo/su. This can be used to find the actual user running a given process [#sysdig/1189]

Minor Changes

• Upgrade zlib to 1.2.11, openssl to 1.0.2n, and libcurl to 7.60.0 to address software vulnerabilities [#402]
• New endswith operator can be used for suffix matching on strings [#sysdig/1209]

Bug Fixes

• Better control of specifying location of lua source code [#406]

Rule Changes

• None for this release.

Released 2018-07-31

Bug Fixes

• Fix a problem that caused the kernel module to not load on certain kernel versions [#397] [#394]

Released 2018-07-24

Major Changes

• EBPF Support (Beta): Falco can now read events via an ebpf program loaded into the kernel instead of the falco-probe kernel module. Full docs here. [#365]

Minor Changes

• Rules may now have an skip-if-unknown-filter property. If set to true, a rule will be skipped if its condition/output property refers to a filtercheck (e.g. fd.some-new-attibute) that is not present in the current falco version. [#364] [[#345](https://github.co\
  m/draios/falco/issues/345)]
• Small changes to Falco COPYING file so github automatically recognizes license [#380]
• New example integration showing how to connect Falco with Anchore to dynamically create falco rules based on negative scan results [#390]
• New example integration showing how to connect Falco, nats, and K8s to run flexible "playbooks" based on Falco events [#389]

Bug Fixes

• Ensure all rules are enabled by default [#379]
• Fix libcurl compilation problems [#374]
• Add gcc-6 to docker container, which improves compatibility when building kernel module [#382] [#371]
• Ensure the /lib/modules symlink to /host/lib/modules is set correctly [#392]

Rule Changes

• Add additional binary writing programs [#366]
• Add additional package management programs [#388] [#366]
• Expand write_below_etc handling for additional programs [#388] [#366]
• Expand set of programs allowed to write to /etc/pki [#388]
• Expand set of root written directories/files [#388] [#366]
• Let pam-config read sensitive files [#388]
• Add additional trusted containers: openshift, datadog, docker ucp agent, gliderlabs logspout [#388]
• Let coreos update-ssh-keys write to /home/core/.ssh [#388]
• Expand coverage for MS OMS [#388] [#387]
• Expand the set of shell spawning programs [#366]
• Add additional mysql programs/directories [#366]
• Let program id open network connections [#366]
• Opt-in rule for protecting tomcat shell spawns [#366]
• New rule Write below monitored directory [#366]

Released 2018-04-24

Major Changes

• Rules Directory Support: Falco will read rules files from /etc/falco/rules.d in addition to /etc/falco/falco_rules.yaml and /etc/falco/falco_rules.local.yaml. Also, when the argument to -r/falco.yaml rules_file is a directory, falco will read rules files from that directory. [#348] [#187]
• Properly support all syscalls (e.g. those without parameter extraction by the kernel module) in falco conditions, so they can be included in evt.type=<name> conditions. [#352]
• When packaged as a container, start building kernel module with gcc 5.0 instead of gcc 4.9. [#331]
• New example puppet module for falco. [#341] [#115]
• When signaled with USR1, falco will close/reopen log files. Include a logrotate example that shows how to use this feature for log rotation. [#347] [#266]
• To improve resource usage, further restrict the set of system calls available to falco [#351] [draios/sysdig#1105]

Minor Changes

• Add gdb to the development Docker image (sysdig/falco:dev) to aid in debugging. [#323]
• You can now specify -V multiple times on the command line to validate multiple rules files at once. [#329]
• When run with -v, falco will print dangling macros/lists that are not used by any rules. [#329]
• Add an example demonstrating cryptomining attack that exploits an open docker daemon using host mounts. [#336]
• New falco.yaml option json_include_output_property controls whether the formatted string "output" is included in the json object when json output is enabled. [#342]
• Centralize testing event types for consideration by falco into a single function [draios/sysdig#1105) [#356]
• If a rule has an attribute warn_evttypes, falco will not complain about evt.type restrictions on that rule [#355]
• When run with -i, print all ignored events/syscalls and exit. [#359]

Bug Fixes

• Minor bug fixes to k8s daemonset configuration. [#325] [#296] [#295]
• Ensure --validate can be used interchangeably with -V. [#334] [#322]
• Rule conditions like fd.net can now be used with the in operator e.g. evt.type=connect and fd.net in ("127.0.0.1/24"). [draios/sysdig#1091] [#343]
• Ensure that keep_alive can be used both with file and program output at the same time. [#335]
• Make it possible to append to a skipped macro/rule without falco complaining [#346] [#305]
• Ensure rule order is preserved even when rules do not contain any evt.type restriction. [#354] [#355]

Rule Changes

• Make it easier to extend the Change thread namespace rule via a user_known_change_thread_namespace_binaries list. [#324]
• Various FP fixes from users. [#321] [#326] [#344] [#350]
• New rule Disallowed SSH Connection detects ssh connection attempts to hosts outside of an expected set. In order to be effective, you need to override the macro allowed_ssh_hosts in a user rules file. [#321]
• New rule Unexpected K8s NodePort Connection detects attempts to contact the K8s NodePort range from a program running inside a container. In order to be effective, you need to override the macro nodeport_containers in a user rules file. [#321]
• Improve Modify binary dirs rule to work with new syscalls [#353]
• New rule Unexpected UDP Traffic checks for udp traffic not on a list of expected ports. Somewhat FP-prone, so it must be explicitly enabled by overriding the macro do_unexpected_udp_check in a user rules file. [#320] [#357]

Released 2018-01-18

Bug Fixes

• Fix driver incompatibility problems with some linux kernel versions that can disable pagefault tracepoints [#sysdig/1034]
• Fix OSX Build incompatibility with latest version of libcurl [#291]

Minor Changes

• Updated the Kubernetes example to provide an additional example: Daemon Set using RBAC and a ConfigMap for configuration. Also expanded the documentation for both the RBAC and non-RBAC examples. [#309]

Rule Changes

• Refactor the shell-related rules to reduce false positives. These changes significantly decrease the scope of the rules so they trigger only for shells spawned below specific processes instead of anywhere. [#301] [#304]
• Lots of rule changes based on feedback from Sysdig Secure community [#293] [#298] [#300] [#307] [#315]

Released 2017-10-10

Bug Fixes

• Fix packaging to specify correct built-in config file [#288]

Released 2017-10-10

Important: the location for falco's configuration file has moved from /etc/falco.yaml to /etc/falco/falco.yaml. The default rules file has moved from /etc/falco_rules.yaml to /etc/falco/falco_rules.yaml. In addition, 0.8.0 has added a local rules file to /etc/falco/falco_rules.local.yaml. See the documentation for more details.

Major Changes

• Add the ability to append one list to another list by setting an append: true attribute. [#264]
• Add the ability to append one macro/rule to another list by setting an append: true attribute. [#277]
• Ensure that falco rules/config files are preserved across package upgrades/removes if modified. [#278]
• Add the notion of a "local" rules file that should contain modifications to the default falco rules file. [#278]
• When using json output, separately include the individual templated fields in the json object. [#282]
• Add the ability to keep a file/program pipe handle open across rule notifications. [#283]
• New argument -V validates rules file and immediately exits. [#286]

Minor Changes

• Minor updates to falco example programs [#248] [#275]
• Also validate macros at rule parse time. [#257]
• Minor README typo fixes [#276]
• Add a government CLA (contributor license agreement). [#263]
• Add ability to only run rules with a priority >= some threshold [#281]
• Add ability to make output channels unbuffered [#285]

Bug Fixes

• Fix installation of falco on OSX [#252]
• Fix a bug that caused the trailing whitespace of a quoted string to be accidentally removed [#254]
• When multiple sets of kernel headers are installed, find the one for the running kernel [#260]
• Allow pathnames in rule/macro conditions to contain '.' characters [#262]
• Fix a bug where a list named "foo" would be substituted even if it were a substring of a longer word like "my_foo" [#258]
• Remove extra trailing newlines from rule output strings [#265]
• Improve build pathnames to avoid relative paths when possible [#284]

Rule Changes

• Significant changes to default ruleset to address FPs. These changes resulted from hundreds of hours of use in actual customer environments. [#247] [#259]
• Add official gitlab EE docker image to list of known shell spawning images. Thanks @dkerwin! [#270]
• Add keepalived to list of shell spawning binaries. Thanks @dkerwin! [#269]

Released 2016-05-30

Major Changes

• Update the priorities of falco rules to use a wider range of priorities rather than just ERROR/WARNING. More info on the use of priorities in the ruleset can be found here. [#244]

Minor Changes

None.

Bug Fixes

• Fix typos in various markdown files. Thanks @sublimino! [#241]

Rule Changes

• Add gitlab-mon as a gitlab binary, which allows it to run shells, etc. Thanks @dkerwin! [#237]
• A new rule Terminal shell in container" that looks for shells spawned in a container with an attached terminal. [#242]
• Fix some FPs related to the sysdig monitor agent. [#243]
• Fix some FPs related to stating containers combined with missed events [#243]

Released 2016-05-15

Major Changes

None

Minor Changes

• Small changes to token bucket used to throttle falco events [#234] [#235] [#236] [#238]

Bug Fixes

• Update the falco driver to work with kernel 4.11 [#829]

Rule Changes

• Don't allow apache2 to spawn shells in containers [#231] [#232]