If Running free terraform scripts ,you are one step ahead of being wiped out

HashiCorp was founded by Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar in 2012 with a mission to build open-source tools for managing cloud infrastructure. Before Terraform, HashiCorp released several popular tools like Vagrant (for development environments) and Consul (for service discovery and configuration).

Terraform, created by HashiCorp, was first released in 2014. It is an open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that enables users to define and provision infrastructure using a high-level configuration language. Terraform's evolution has been influenced by the growing need for automating infrastructure management, especially in cloud computing environments. Below is a timeline and key milestones in the history of Terraform.

Terraform comes in 4 different pricing :

• Free :The free tier provides 500 managed resources per month without requiring a credit card. The free tier also only offers a single concurrent run.
• Standard :The standard tier starts at $0.00014 per hour for each additional resource used after the initial 500 free managed resources.
• Plus :The plus tier is custom and is intended for enterprises that want to standardize and manage their infrastructure automation and lifecycle.?
• Enterprise : The enterprise tier is custom and self-managed, and is intended for enterprises with special security, compliance, and additional operational requirements. Terraform Enterprise pricing starts at $15,000 per year for five workspaces.?

Here comes the problem :

Majority of free tools available on Github are using free terraform .

What is problem ?

Terraform stores the state of your infrastructure in a state file (by default, terraform.tfstate). This file contains details about every resource Terraform manages, including sensitive information like passwords, access keys, IP addresses, and other infrastructure metadata.

Its just one malicious access to that file and your entire cloud deployment can be disturbed .

How to mitigate?

• Store the state file in a secure remote backend (e.g., AWS S3 with server-side encryption).
• Enable encryption and access control on state storage (e.g., S3 with IAM roles and KMS encryption).
• Use Terraform's sensitive flag to mask sensitive information from being output in logs or the state file.

The free version of Terraform does not have built-in mechanisms to securely manage secrets (e.g., database passwords, API tokens). Users might inadvertently hard-code sensitive information in Terraform configuration files or pass them as variables.        

If sensitive information is hardcoded in configurations or passed as environment variables, it can be exposed in version control (e.g., GitHub) or Terraform logs.Sensitive values may also get stored in the state file, further increasing exposure risk.

Mitigation:

1. Use external secret management tools like AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, or AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store to handle sensitive data.
2. Avoid hardcoding secrets in Terraform files and pass them securely as environment variables or external parameters.
3. Mark sensitive variables as sensitive in Terraform to prevent logging.

Terraform often requires broad permissions to manage infrastructure. Without proper role-based access control (RBAC), any user with access to Terraform can create, modify, or delete critical resources.

• Lack of fine-grained permissions for Terraform users can lead to unauthorized or accidental infrastructure changes.
• If using a shared environment, without locking or access controls, multiple users might make conflicting changes to the infrastructure.

Mitigation:

• Implement least privilege principles by setting up IAM roles with scoped permissions to limit Terraform's access to only the resources it needs.
• For team environments, use state locking mechanisms (e.g., Terraform remote state backend with DynamoDB locks) to prevent race conditions and concurrent updates

In multi-user or collaborative environments, multiple users might try to update infrastructure simultaneously, leading to state conflicts or inconsistent infrastructure.

• In multi-user or collaborative environments, multiple users might try to update infrastructure simultaneously, leading to state conflicts or inconsistent infrastructure.
• Vulnerabilities:Lack of proper state locking can result in simultaneous modifications, causing configuration drift or resource mismanagement.Manual attempts to resolve conflicts can result in unintended infrastructure changes.
• Mitigation:Use remote state backends with state locking enabled (e.g., AWS S3 with DynamoDB for state locking).Implement version control practices to track changes in Terraform code and avoid conflicts.

Drift occurs when infrastructure changes are made outside of Terraform (e.g., manually in the cloud console). The free version of Terraform does not include native drift detection, meaning it's hard to automatically detect discrepancies between the actual state of infrastructure and the state defined in code.        

• Vulnerabilities:Security gaps or misconfigurations might arise if unauthorized or out-of-band changes are made without updating Terraform configurations.
• Mitigation:Periodically run terraform plan to detect configuration drift between the actual infrastructure and the Terraform configuration.Use third-party tools or paid versions of Terraform Cloud/Enterprise for more advanced drift detection and monitoring.

The free version of Terraform lacks native governance tools to enforce policies (like security best practices or compliance requirements) when deploying infrastructure.        

• There’s no automated way to enforce security policies or check for non-compliant infrastructure in free Terraform, which could lead to deployment of insecure resources (e.g., opening up a security group too broadly).

Teams relying solely on free Terraform may overlook compliance risks

Free Terraform does not have built-in audit logging to track who applied changes, what changes were made, or when those changes occurred. This makes it harder to detect malicious activities or track down the cause of unintended changes.

Vulnerabilities:Lack of audit logs could lead to undetected infrastructure modifications, making it challenging to troubleshoot issues or conduct post-incident analysis.