Maximum Container Image Age

This guide demonstrates how to use the Sigstore Policy Controller to verify image signatures before admitting an image into a Kubernetes cluster. In this guide, you will create a ClusterImagePolicy that checks the maximum age of a container image verifying that isn’t older than 30 days. For that, we’ll attempt to create two distroless images one older than 30 days and a fresh one.

Prerequisites #

To follow along with this guide outside of the terminal that is embedded on this page, you will need the following:

• A Kubernetes cluster with administrative access. You can set up a local cluster using kind or use an existing cluster.
• kubectl — to work with your cluster. Install kubectl for your operating system by following the official Kubernetes kubectl documentation.
• Sigstore Policy Controller installed in your cluster. Follow our How To Install Sigstore Policy Controller guide if you do not have it installed, and be sure to label any namespace that you intend to use with the policy.sigstore.dev/include=true label.

If you are using the terminal that is embedded on this page, then all the prerequisites are installed for you. Note that it may take a minute or two for the Kubernetes cluster to finish provisioning. If you receive any errors while running commands, retry them after waiting a few seconds.

Once you have everything in place you can continue to the first step and confirm that the Policy Controller is working as expected.

Step 1 - Checking the Policy Controller is Denying Admission #

Before creating a ClusterImagePolicy, check that the Policy Controller is deployed and that your default namespace is labeled correctly. Run the following to check that the deployment is complete:

kubectl -n cosign-system wait --for=condition=Available deployment/policy-controller-webhook && \
kubectl -n cosign-system wait --for=condition=Available deployment/policy-controller-policy-webhook

When both deployments are finished, verify the default namespace is using the Policy Controller:

kubectl get ns -l policy.sigstore.dev/include=true

You should receive output like the following:

NAME      STATUS   AGE
default   Active   24s

Once you are sure that the Policy Controller is deployed and your default namespace is configured to use it, run a pod to make sure admission requests are handled and denied by default:

kubectl run --image ghcr.io/distroless/static myoldimage

Since there is no ClusterImagePolicy defined yet, the Policy Controller will allow the admission request.

In the next step, you will define a policy that verifies Chainguard Images has an age below 30days and apply it to your cluster.

Step 2 — Creating a ClusterImagePolicy #

Now that you have the Policy Controller running in your cluster, and have the default namespace configured to use it, you can now define a ClusterImagePolicy to admit images.

Open a new file with nano or your preferred editor:

nano /tmp/cip.yaml

Copy the following policy to the /tmp/cip.yaml file:

# Copyright 2022 Chainguard, Inc.
# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

apiVersion: policy.sigstore.dev/v1beta1
kind: ClusterImagePolicy
metadata:
  name: maximum-image-age-rego
  annotations:
    catalog.chainguard.dev/title: Maximum image age
    catalog.chainguard.dev/description: |
      This checks that the maximum age an image is allowed to
      have is 30 days old.  This is measured using the container
      image's configuration, which has a "created" field.

      Some build tools may fail this check because they build
      reproducibly, and use a fixed date (e.g. the Unix epoch)
      as their creation time, but many of these tools support
      specifying SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, which aligns the creation
      time with the date of the source commit.

    catalog.chainguard.dev/labels: rego
spec:
  images: [{ glob: "**" }]
  authorities: [{ static: { action: pass } }]
  mode: enforce
  policy:
    fetchConfigFile: true
    type: "rego"
    data: |
      package sigstore

      nanosecs_per_second = 1000 * 1000 * 1000
      nanosecs_per_day = 24 * 60 * 60 * nanosecs_per_second

      # Change this to the maximum number of days to allow.
      maximum_age = 30 * nanosecs_per_day

      isCompliant[response] {
        created := time.parse_rfc3339_ns(input.config[_].created)

        response := {
          "result" : time.now_ns() < created + maximum_age,
          "error" : "Image exceeds maximum allowed age."
        }
      }

The glob: ** line, working in combination with the authorities and policy sections, will allow any image that has been built in the last 30 days to be admitted into your cluster.

The fetchConfigFile options instruct the Policy Controller to check the image configuration looking for the age of the image. The rest of fields are:

• authorities: this setting tells the Policy Controller to skip any verification looking for the presence of an image signature.
• mode: this blocks the creation of any image older than 30days.
• policy.data: contains the rego policy itself that verifies when the image has been created.

Save the file and then apply the policy:

kubectl apply -f /tmp/cip.yaml

You will receive output showing the policy is created:

clusterimagepolicy.policy.sigstore.dev/maximum-image-age-rego created

Now run the cgr.dev/chainguard/static image again:

kubectl run --image cgr.dev/chainguard/static mydailyfreshimage

Since the image is built on daily basis, you will receive a message that the pod was created successfully:

pod/mydailyfreshimage created

However, if we now create a pod using our old image myoldimage, PolicyController rejects the admission request with a message like the following:

Error from server (BadRequest): admission webhook "policy.sigstore.dev" denied the request: validation failed: ghcr.io/distroless/static@sha256:a9650a15060275287ebf4530b34020b8d998bd2de9aea00d113c332d8c41eb0b failed evaluating rego policy for type ClusterImagePolicy: policy is not compliant for query 'isCompliant = data.sigstore.isCompliant' with errors: Image exceeds maximum allowed age.

Delete the pod once you’re done experimenting with it:

kubectl delete pod mydailyfreshimage

To learn more about how the Policy Controller uses Cosign to verify and admit images, review the Cosign Sigstore documentation.

Options for Continuous Verification #

While it is useful to use the Policy Controller to manage admission into a cluster, once a workload is running any vulnerability or policy violations that occur after containers are running will not be detected.

Chainguard Enforce is designed to address this issue by continuously verifying whether a container or cluster contains any vulnerabilities or policy violations over time. This includes what packages are deployed, SBOMs (software bills of materials), provenance, signature data, and more.

If you’re interested in learning more about Chainguard Enforce, you can request access to the product by selecting Chainguard Enforce for Kubernetes on the inquiry form.