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Anchore Enterprise step configuration



The Anchore Enterprise step in Harness STO lets you scan your container images using Anchore Enterprise.
This step supports the following scan modes: Orchestration, Extraction, and Ingestion.

Before running Anchore Enterprise scans in STO, make sure the following requirements are met:

  • Anchore API and Version Compatibility: Use the Anchore v2 API and Anchore Enterprise Server v5.0 or later when running Orchestration or Extraction scan modes.
  • Server Configuration: When deploying your Anchore Enterprise server, ensure that port 8228 is exposed. Harness uses this port to communicate with the Anchore server.
  • Air-Gapped Environments: If you’re using this step in an air-gapped setup, review the following Anchore documentation for setup and feed synchronization guidance:
info

Anchore Enterprise step settings​

The recommended workflow is to add an Anchore Enterprise step to a Build or Security stage and then configure it as described below.

Scan​

Scan mode​

  • Orchestration Configure the step to run a scan and then ingest, normalize, and deduplicate the results.

Refer to the Orchestration setup section below to learn how to configure the Orchestration scan mode.

Scan configuration​

The predefined configuration to use for the scan. All scan steps have at least one configuration.

This option allows you to set the Anchore's VULN_TYPE parameter. This setting filters the records returned to STO; it does not change how Anchore analyzes images.

  • Default or All: Combination report containing both OS and Non-OS vulnerability records.
  • OS: Vulnerabilities against operating system packages (RPM, DPKG, APK, etc.).
  • Non-OS: Vulnerabilities against language packages (NPM, GEM, Java Archive (jar, war, ear), Python PIP, .NET NuGet, etc.).

Target​

Type​

  • Container Image Scan the layers, libraries, and packages in a container image.

Target and Variant Detection​

When Auto is enabled for container images, the step detects the target and variant using the Container Image Name and Tag defined in the step or runtime input.

Note the following:

  • Auto is not available when the Scan Mode is Ingestion.
  • By default, Auto is selected when you add the step. You can change this setting if needed.

Name​

The identifier for the target, such as codebaseAlpha or jsmith/myalphaservice. Descriptive target names make it much easier to navigate your scan data in the STO UI.

It is good practice to specify a baseline for every target.

Variant​

The identifier for the specific variant to scan. This is usually the branch name, image tag, or product version. Harness maintains a historical trend for each variant.

Container image​

Type (orchestration)​

The registry type where the image is stored:

  • Docker v2 A registry that uses the Docker Registry v2 API such as Docker Hub, Google Container Registry, or Google Artifact Registry. STO will automatically pull and scan the container image or OCI/Docker archive.

  • AWS ECR Set your AWS ECR connector with image details. STO will automatically pull and scan the container image or OCI/Docker archive.

  • Jfrog Artifactory Set your Jfrog Artifactory connector with image details. STO will automatically pull and scan the container image or OCI/Docker archive.

  • Local Image in this Stage Scan a local image built and stored within the context of the current stage (via /var/run/docker.sock registered as a stage level volume mount). For this, you will need to configure Docker-in-Docker as a background step. STO will identify and scan the container image matching the step configuration inside the Docker-in-Docker background within that stage.

  • Local OCI/Docker archive in this Stage Scan an OCI or Docker archive created and stored within the current stage. STO will scan the archive based on the path configured in the workspace field during the step. Ensure that the path to which the archive is saved is a shared volume mount.

Domain​

The URL of the registry that contains the image to scan. Examples include:

  • docker.io
  • app.harness.io/registry
  • us-east1-docker.pkg.dev

Name​

The image name. For non-local images, you also need to specify the image repository. Example: jsmith/myalphaservice

Tag​

The image tag. Examples: latest, 1.2.3

Access ID​

The username to log in to the image registry.

Access Token​

The access token used to log in to the image registry. This is usually a password or an API key.

You should create a Harness text secret with your encrypted token and reference the secret using the format <+secrets.getValue("container-access-id")>. For more information, go to Add and Reference Text Secrets.

Ingestion File​

The path to your scan results when running an Ingestion scan, for example /shared/scan_results/myscan.latest.sarif.

  • The data file must be in a supported format for the scanner.

  • The data file must be accessible to the scan step. It's good practice to save your results files to a shared path in your stage. In the visual editor, go to the stage where you're running the scan. Then go to Overview > Shared Paths. You can also add the path to the YAML stage definition like this:

        - stage:
          spec:
            sharedPaths:
              - /shared/scan_results

Authentication​

Domain​

The fully-qualified URL to the scanner API, for example https://anchore.company.io/api or http://192.0.2.1:8228.

Access ID​

The username to log in to the scanner.

Access Token​

The access token to log in to the scanner. This is usually a password or an API key.

You should create a Harness text secret with your encrypted token and reference the secret using the format <+secrets.getValue("my-access-token")>. For more information, go to Add and Reference Text Secrets.

Scan Tool​

Use Raw Scanner Severity​

This option allows you to configure the step to use the severity reported directly by the scanner. By default, STO assigns severity based on numeric scores (such as CVSS). When this option is enabled, STO bypasses its internal severity mapping and uses the severity levels reported by the scanner (e.g., Critical, High, Medium, Low).

To enable this behavior, check the Use Raw Scanner Severity field (recommended), or add ingest_tool_severity: true setting in the Settings section.

Image Name (for Extraction Scan Mode)​

This field appears only when you select Extraction as the Scan Mode. The name of the image that you want to extract from Anchore. In Extraction mode, the image to scan must be located on the Anchore server. You should include both the image name and tag, for example, ubuntu:20.04.

Log Level​

The minimum severity of the messages you want to include in your scan logs. You can specify one of the following:

  • DEBUG
  • INFO
  • WARNING
  • ERROR

Additional CLI flags​

Use this field to run the Anchore Enterprise CLI with flags such as --force. This flag resets the image analysis status to not_analyzed.

caution

Passing additional CLI flags is an advanced feature. Harness recommends the following best practices:

  • Test your flags and arguments thoroughly before you use them in your Harness pipelines. Some flags might not work in the context of STO.

  • Don't add flags that are already used in the default configuration of the scan step.

    To check the default configuration, go to a pipeline execution where the scan step ran with no additional flags. Check the log output for the scan step. You should see a line like this:

    Command [ scancmd -f json -o /tmp/output.json ]

    In this case, don't add -f or -o to Additional CLI flags.

Fail on Severity​

Every STO scan step has a Fail on Severity setting. If the scan finds any vulnerability with the specified severity level or higher, the pipeline fails automatically. You can specify one of the following:

  • CRITICAL
  • HIGH
  • MEDIUM
  • LOW
  • INFO
  • NONE — Do not fail on severity

The YAML definition looks like this: fail_on_severity : critical # | high | medium | low | info | none

Settings​

You can use this field to specify environment variables for your scanner.

Additional Configuration​

The fields under Additional Configuration vary based on the type of infrastructure. Depending on the infrastructure type selected, some fields may or may not appear in your settings. Below are the details for each field

Advanced settings​

In the Advanced settings, you can use the following options:

View Anchore policy failures​

Anchore policy failures will appear in scan results as Info severity issues, with the issue type set to EXTERNAL_POLICY. Successfully passed policies will not be included in the scan results. Additionally, you can apply an OPA policy to fail the pipeline based on the policy failures. This can be achieved using the Security Tests - External Policy Failures policy from the security tests policy samples.

Proxy settings​

This step supports Harness Secure Connect if you're using Harness Cloud infrastructure. During the Secure Connect setup, the HTTPS_PROXY and HTTP_PROXY variables are automatically configured to route traffic through the secure tunnel. If there are specific addresses that you want to bypass the Secure Connect proxy, you can define those in the NO_PROXY variable. This can be configured in the Settings of your step.

If you need to configure a different proxy (not using Secure Connect), you can manually set the HTTPS_PROXY, HTTP_PROXY, and NO_PROXY variables in the Settings of your step.

Definitions of Proxy variables:​

  • HTTPS_PROXY: Specify the proxy server for HTTPS requests, example https://sc.internal.harness.io:30000
  • HTTP_PROXY: Specify the proxy server for HTTP requests, example http://sc.internal.harness.io:30000
  • NO_PROXY: Specify the domains as comma-separated values that should bypass the proxy. This allows you to exclude certain traffic from being routed through the proxy.

Anchore Enterprise orchestration example​

This example uses an Anchore step in Orchestration mode to scan a repository. The pipeline has one Security stage with two steps:

  1. A Background step that runs Docker-in-Docker. This is required to scan container images.

  2. An Anchore step that does the following:

    1. Extracts the owasp/nettacker:latest image from Anchore Enterprise.
    2. Logs in to the Anchore Enterprise API based on the product_domain, product_access_id, product_access_token settings.
    3. Launches an orchestration scan of the owasp/nettacker project in Anchore Enterprise and gets the scan results from the Anchore server.
    4. Deduplicates and normalizes the scan data and ingests it into STO.

Note that in this example, the resource limits for the Docker-in-Docker step are increased to ensure that the step has enough memory to store the scanned image.

Anchore Enterprise orchestration pipeline example

pipeline:
  name: anchore step palette
  identifier: anchore_step-palette
  projectIdentifier: default
  orgIdentifier: default
  tags: {}
  stages:
    - stage:
        name: anchore
        identifier: anchore
        type: SecurityTests
        spec:
          cloneCodebase: false
          execution:
            steps:
              - step:
                  type: Background
                  name: docker_dind
                  identifier: docker_dind
                  spec:
                    connectorRef: YOUR_DOCKER_CONNECTOR_ID
                    image: docker:dind
                    shell: Sh
                    command: dockerd
                    privileged: true
                    resources:
                      limits:
                        memory: 2048Mi
                        cpu: 1000m
              - step:
                  type: Anchore
                  name: Anchore_1
                  identifier: Anchore_1
                  spec:
                    mode: orchestration
                    config: default
                    target:
                      name: owasp/nettacker
                      type: container
                      variant: latest
                    advanced:
                      log:
                        level: info
                      args:
                        cli: "--force"
                    privileged: true
                    image:
                      type: docker_v2
                      name: owasp/nettacker
                      tag: latest
                    auth:
                      access_token: <+secrets.getValue("YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET")>
                      access_id: <+secrets.getValue("YOUR_ACCESS_ID_SECRET")>
                      domain: YOUR_DOMAIN_URL
          infrastructure:
            type: KubernetesDirect
            spec:
              connectorRef: YOUR_KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_CONNECTOR_ID
              namespace: YOUR_KUBERNETES_NAMESPACE
              automountServiceAccountToken: true
              nodeSelector: {}
              os: Linux
          sharedPaths:
            - /var/run
          caching:
            enabled: false
            paths: []
          slsa_provenance:
            enabled: false