Agent Configuration for Secure

This page lists the major configurations required to enable Sysdig Secure features.

Configure Malware Control

Malware Control, which is comprised of Malware Detection and Prevention, is enabled by default for containers. Malware Detection is enabled by default for hosts, but Malware Prevention is disabled by default for hosts.

You can configure the agent to:

  • Enable or disable Malware Control for both hosts and containers.
  • Enable or disable Malware Prevention for hosts.

To configure the agent, see Understand the Agent Configuration.

Prerequisites

  • Sysdig Agent v13.0.1 and above
  • Linux kernel v5.0 and above

Enable or Disable Malware Control

To enable Malware Control for hosts and containers, use this configuration:

agent:
  sysdig:
    settings:
      malware_control:
        enabled: true

Alternatively, use the following Helm command:

--set agent.sysdig.settings.malware_control.enabled=true

To disable Malware Control for hosts and containers, use this configuration:

agent:
  sysdig:
    settings:
      malware_control:
        enabled: false

Enable or Disable Malware Prevention for Hosts

Malware Prevention, by default, is disabled for Hosts. To enable it, use the following configuration:

protections:
  malware_control:
    enable_prevention_on_host: true

To disable Malware Prevention on hosts, use the following configuration:

protections:
  malware_control:
    enable_prevention_on_host: false

Enable or Disable Malware Detection on Opens and Writes

Malware Detection is enabled for opens and writes by default with the following configuration:

protections:
  malware_control:
    enable_elf_object_malware_scanning: true

To disable Malware Detection on opens and writes, use the following configuration:

protections:
  malware_control:
    enable_elf_object_malware_scanning: false

Configure Container Limits

  • For kernel versions below v5.13, Malware can monitor up to 128 containers per node.

  • For kernel versions v5.13 or above, modify the container limit using one of the following methods:

    • Open the sysctl -n fs.fanotify.max_user_groups file and set the new value using sysctl -w fs.fanotify.max_user_groups=<new_limit>.

    • Check the current limit using cat /proc/sys/fs/fanotify/max_user_groups file and use echo <new_limit> > /proc/sys/fs/fanotify/max_user_groups to set the new limit.

Configure Drift Control

Sysdig Agent v12.16.0+

Drift Control is enabled by default on agent versions v12.16.0 and later.

Optional Values

Enable detections from mounted/persistent volumes.

Configuration
drift_deny_execution_from_volumes: true
Helm Command
--set agent.sysdig.settings.drift_deny_execution_from_volumes=true

Sysdig Agent v12.14.0

This configuration is deprecated for newer agent versions.

Configuration

Enable Drift
drift_killer:
  enabled: true
Disable Drift
drift_killer:
  enabled: false

Here is an example configuration:

agent:
  ebpf:
    enabled: "true"
    kind: "universal_ebpf"
  sysdig:
    settings:
      enrich_with_process_lineage: "true"
      drift_control:
        enabled: false

Helm Command

 --set agent.sysdig.settings.drift_killer.enabled=true

Configure Container Limits

  • For kernel versions below v5.13, Drift Control can monitor up to 128 containers per node.

  • For kernel versions v5.13 or above, modify the container limit using one of the following methods:

    • Open the sysctl -n fs.fanotify.max_user_groups file and set the new value using sysctl -w fs.fanotify.max_user_groups=<new_limit>.

    • Open the cat /proc/sys/fs/fanotify/max_user_groups file and run echo <new_limit> > /proc/sys/fs/fanotify/max_user_groups.

      Replace <new_limit> with your choice of container limit.

Configure Falco Rule Matching Strategy

Sysdig agent v.12.18+

From Sysdig agent v12.18.0+, the agent evaluates an event against all the rules, potentially triggering multiple alerts. In previous versions, the agent stopped evaluating rules after the first match.

To control this behavior, a new option has been added to dragent.yaml: security.falco_match_strategy

security:
  falco_match_strategy: all

To evaluate all rules for every event; set it to all. This is the default option.

To stop evaluation after the first match; set it to first.

Report Actions in Kubernetes Events

Sysdig agent v.12.18+

For a full description of the feature, see Threat Detection Policies.

Permissions

  • Helm: If you deploy the agent using Helm, the permissions to enable create and patch actions for events on all APIs are automatically granted.

  • Manual: If you deploy manually, you must set up a Kubernetes cluster role with those permissions enabled. Example without cluster role binding:

    apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: sysdig-agent
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - events
  verbs:
  - create
  - patch

    Example with cluster role binding:

    apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: sysdig-agent
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - events
  verbs:
  - create
  - patch
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: sysdig-agent
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: sysdig-agent
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: sysdig-agent
  namespace: sysdig-agent
---

Ignore Container Actions at the Agent Level

Sysdig agent v12.10+

For Threat Detection policies, you can use the agent-level configuration, ignore_container_action to prevent the Sysdig agent from taking potentially disruptive container operations, such as kill, pause, stop, regardless of the runtime threat detection policy.

This configuration is disabled by default. To enable it, add the following to the dragent.yaml file:

security:  ignore_container_action: true

See Configure the Agent.

When the configuration is enabled, and a policy instructs the agent to perform a container operation, the agent ignores the policy and creates an Info log message explaining the agent did not perform the action because of the configuration.

See Workload Policy for an example of the container action at the policy level.