Integrate Checkov with GitLab CI

Integrating Checkov into your GitLab CI pipelines provides a simple, automatic way of applying policies to your Terraform code both during merge request review and as part of your build process.

Basic Setup

Add a new job in .gitlab-ci.yml in your repository (at whatever stage is appropriate for you).

Here is a basic example:

stages:
    - test
    
checkov:
  stage: test
  allow_failure: true  # True for AutoDevOps compatibility
  image:
    name: bridgecrew/checkov:latest
    entrypoint:
      - '/usr/bin/env'
      - 'PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin'
  rules:
    - if: $SAST_DISABLED
      when: never
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH
      exists:
        - '**/*.yml'
        - '**/*.yaml'
        - '**/*.json'
        - '**/*.template'
        - '**/*.tf'      
        - '**/serverless.yml'
        - '**/serverless.yaml'
  script:
    - checkov -d . -o junitxml | tee checkov.test.xml
  artifacts:
    reports:
      junit: "checkov.test.xml"
    paths:
      - "checkov.test.xml"

Example Results

When your pipeline executes, it will run this job. If Checkov finds any issues, it will fail the build.

Pipeline Failure

For example, I have an S3 bucket that does not have versioning enabled. Checkov detects this and fails the job and pipeline.

This will comment on an associated merge request or fail the build depending on the context.

GitLab will collect the results into the normal unit testing area of the pipeline and/or the merge request.

Pipeline Success

Once you correct the configuration, Checkov verifies that no errors have been found.

Colored Output

Note that in the examples above, the output of the test results does not display colors. This is because GitLab Runner runs without an interactive TTY. Although Checkov does not currently support an environment variable to force colored output, the script command can be used to emulate tty so colors are displayed:

stages:
    - test

checkov:
  stage: test
  allow_failure: true  # True for AutoDevOps compatibility
  image:
    name: bridgecrew/checkov:latest
    entrypoint:
      - '/usr/bin/env'
      - 'PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin'
  rules:
    - if: $SAST_DISABLED
      when: never
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH
      exists:
        - '**/*.yml'
        - '**/*.yaml'
        - '**/*.json'
        - '**/*.template'
        - '**/*.tf'      
        - '**/serverless.yml'
        - '**/serverless.yaml'
  script:
    # Use `script` to emulate `tty` for colored output.
    - script -q -c 'checkov -d . ; echo $? > CKVEXIT'
    - exit $(cat CKVEXIT)

See the GitLab CI documentation for additional information. There is also a working example of using GitLab CI with Checkov here. This example shows how to use the same Checkov YAML file as an includable extension so that all your jobs reuse the same job definition.