Rapid Response: Installation

With Rapid Response, Sysdig has introduced a way to grant designated Advanced Users in Sysdig Secure the ability to remote connect into a host directly from the Event stream and execute desired commands there.

See also: Rapid Response.

Install and Configure Rapid Response

Prerequisites

• Sysdig Secure On-Premises 4.0+ or Sysdig Secure SaaS

• Have on hand:

  • Your Sysdig agent access key

  • Your Sysdig API endpoint

    • On-prem: custom, depending on your on-prem installation

    • SaaS: Region-dependent (use the “endpoint” entries, e.g. https://us2.app.sysdig.com for US West)

  • A passphrase used to encrypt all traffic between the user and host.

    NOTE: Sysdig cannot recover this passphrase. If lost, a user will not be able to start a session, nor will any session logs be recoverable.

  Optionally, these can be added to the environment variables:

  export API_ENDPOINT=https://secure-staging.mycompany.com
  export ACCESS_KEY=$YOUR_SYSDIG_AGENT_INSTALLATION_KEY
  export PASSPHRASE=$ENCRYPTION_PASSPHRASE
  export API_TLS_SKIP_CHECK=false
  

Install Host Component

The Rapid Response agent can be installed as a Docker container, as a Kubernetes DaemonSet or via Helm.

As Docker Container

1. Mount the host directories and binaries to gain access to the host.

   docker run --hostname $HOST_NAME -d quay.io/sysdig/rapid-response-host-component:latest --endpoint $API_ENDPOINT --access-key $ACCESS_KEY --password $PASSPHRASE
   

2. Customize the Docker image.

   The container is simply bash shell. To add custom scripts without needing to mount the underlying host filesystem, you can bake this into the Docker container, e.g. by installing kubectl, gcloud, netstat, or another command-line utility.

   FROM quay.io/sysdig/rapid-response-host-component:latest AS base-image
   
   FROM alpine:3.13
   COPY --from=base-image /usr/bin/host /usr/bin/host
   
   # add custom scripts and other directives
   
   ENTRYPOINT ["host"]
   

As Kubernetes DaemonSet

1. Create a namespace and secrets for the Rapid Response agent:

   kubectl create ns rapid-response
   kubectl create secret generic sysdig-rapid-response-host-component-access-key --from-literal=access-key=$ACCESS_KEY -n rapid-response
   kubectl create secret generic sysdig-rapid-response-host-component-passphrase --from-literal=passphrase=$PASSPHRASE -n rapid-response
   

2. Create the configmap and change the API-ENDPOINT parameter:

   echo "apiVersion: v1
   kind: ConfigMap
   metadata:
     name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
   data:
     api-endpoint: ${API_ENDPOINT}
     api-tls-skip-check: 'false'" | kubectl apply -n rapid-response -f -
   

3. Deploy the DaemonSet.

   Note: The agent does not automatically have access to the host filesystem; there are several mounts commented-out in the manifest that must be uncommented to investigate the host.

   echo "# apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1  # If you are in Kubernetes version 1.8 or less please use this line instead of the following one
   apiVersion: apps/v1
   kind: DaemonSet
   metadata:
     name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
     labels:
       app: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
   spec:
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         app: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
     updateStrategy:
       type: RollingUpdate
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           app: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
       spec:
         hostNetwork: true
         volumes:
           # Add custom volume here
           # Uncomment these lines if you'd like to map /root/ from the
           # host into the container.
           #- hostPath:
           #    path: /
           #  name: host-root-vol
           - name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component-config
             configMap:
               name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
               optional: true
         tolerations:
           - effect: NoSchedule
             key: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
         containers:
           - name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
             image: quay.io/sysdig/rapid-response-host-component
             #securityContext:
               # The privileged flag is necessary for OCP 4.x and other Kubernetes setups that deny host filesystem access to
               # running containers by default regardless of volume mounts. In those cases, access to the CRI socket would fail.
             #  privileged: true
             imagePullPolicy: Always
             resources:
               limits:
                 cpu: 500m
                 memory: 500Mi
               requests:
                 cpu: 250m
                 memory: 250Mi
             # Add custom volume mount here
             # Uncomment these lines if you'd like to map /root/ from the
             # host into the container.
             #volumeMounts:
             #- mountPath: /host
             #  name: host-root-vol
             env:
               - name: API_ENDPOINT
                 valueFrom:
                   configMapKeyRef:
                     name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
                     key: api-endpoint
               - name: API_TLS_SKIP_CHECK
                 valueFrom:
                   configMapKeyRef:
                     name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component
                     key: api-tls-skip-check
               - name: ACCESS_KEY
                 valueFrom:
                   secretKeyRef:
                     name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component-access-key
                     key: access-key
               - name: PASSWORD
                 valueFrom:
                   secretKeyRef:
                     name: sysdig-rapid-response-host-component-passphrase
                     key: passphrase" | kubectl apply -n rapid-response -f -
   

Using Helm

The Rapid Response Helm chart can be deployed as:

helm repo add sysdig https://charts.sysdig.com
helm install rapid-response sysdig/rapid-response \
  --namespace rapid-response \
  --create-namespace \
  --set sysdig.accessKey=${ACCESS_KEY} \
  --set rapidResponse.passphrase=${PASSPHRASE} \
  --set rapidResponse.apiEndpoint=${API_ENDPOINT}

Note: The agent does not automatically have access to the host filesystem; use the extraVolumes setting to do so.

Complete the Configuration

After installation/upgrade, complete the following steps:

• Request enablement of the feature from Sysdig Support.

• Configure an S3 bucket for Rapid Response logs: If you are using the default Cassandra storage for Capture files, you will need to configure an AWS or custom S3 bucket to store Rapid Response log files after a session. If you have already configured an S3 bucket for Captures, then Rapid Response logs will be routed there automatically, into their own folder.

• Manage the following port/firewall considerations:

  • Ensure the host component is able to reach the endpoint defined in API_ENDPOINT

  • Ensure there are no intermediate proxies that could enforce maximum time to live (since sessions could potentially have long durations)

  • Ensure that the host component can reach the object storage (S3 bucket) when configured.

• Configure and use Rapid Response in the Sysdig Secure UI: See Rapid Response.