CI/CD Risks: Protecting Your Software Development Pipelines

Exemplifies the advancements in automating software maintenance tasks, this incident also underscores the broader complexities and vulnerabilities inherent in CI/CD pipelines. These pipelines serve as vital conduits, linking the external world of software development tools and platforms with the internal processes of software creation and deployment. Understanding this connection is key to addressing the security challenges we face.

CI/CD Pipelines: Connecting the Outside World with the Internal One

Continuous integration (CI) and deployment (CD) workflows have revolutionized the software development process, providing developers with the ability to seamlessly merge their work and deploy it to the production environment. These workflows ensure that the code undergoes automated security scans, rigorous testing, and adherence to coding standards, resulting in a more efficient and reliable development process. They have become a catalyst for innovation, enabling teams to focus on building and enhancing their products with the assurance of quality and security.

To illustrate the concept, imagine building a puzzle. CI acts as a vigilant checker, verifying that each new puzzle piece fits correctly before moving forward. On the other hand, CD takes this a step further by automatically placing each verified piece into the final puzzle, eliminating the need to wait for the entire puzzle to be completed. This accelerated process allows for faster feature delivery and ultimately expedites the overall product development timeline.

CI/CD breaches frequently stem from either an initial compromise of secrets or developers becoming targets of specific attacks. However, rather than blaming developers for these breaches, it is crucial to recognize that the issue lies in the inherent lack of security in these pipelines. This highlights a larger problem: CI/CD pipelines are far from being secure by default.

The Problem: CI/CD Pipelines Are Far from Secure by Default#

Although the idea of implementing secure-by-design workflows is becoming more popular, CI/CD platforms still have a significant way to go. Platforms like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, and CircleCI, which were initially designed with flexibility in mind, often prioritize ease of use over robust security measures. As a result, there is a lack of default safeguards to prevent potential issues from arising.

A glaring example of this is how easy it is for a developer to expose sensitive information like secrets. Developers commonly inject secrets at runtime and rely for that on the capability to store secrets in the CI provider itself. While this practice isn't a problem by itself, it raises at least two security concerns: first, the CI provider hosting the secrets becomes a vault of sensitive information and an attractive target for attackers.

Safeguarding CI/CD and the Software Supply Chain#

To effectively secure CI/CD pipelines, it's crucial to view them as high-priority, potentially externally connected environments. The key is a mix of best practices:

• Restrict Access and Minimize Privileges: Grant access based on necessity, not convenience. Extensive access to all DevOps team members increases the risk of a compromised account providing attackers with extensive system access. Limit access to critical controls, configurations, or sensitive data.

• Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Crucially, always use multi-factor authentication (MFA) for logging into the CI/CD platform. MFA adds an essential layer of security, making it significantly harder for unauthorized users to gain access even if they have compromised credentials.
• Utilize OpenID Connect (OIDC): Employ OIDC for securely connecting workloads to external systems, such as for deployment. This protocol provides a robust framework for authentication and cross-domain identity verification, which is critical in a distributed and interconnected environment.

• Use Pre-Reviewed Software Dependencies: It's important to provide developers with safe, pre-reviewed software dependencies. This practice safeguards the supply chain's integrity and spares developers from having to verify each package's code. This ensures supply chain integrity, relieving developers from the burden of individually verifying each package's code.