Open-source alternatives to Kube Bench

Kube-hunter is a security scanner and vulnerability hunter for Kubernetes clusters. It operates as a cloud-native penetration tool designed to identify security weaknesses, infrastructure misconfigurations, and exploitable gaps by simulating attacker techniques. The tool distinguishes itself through a dual-mode scanning engine that executes both remote external probes and internal network scans. It features identity-based impersonation, allowing it to use service account tokens and pod identities to simulate security access from specific cluster roles and determine the potential blast radius

ScoutSuite is a multi-cloud security audit and configuration tool designed to identify security risks and misconfigurations across cloud environments. It functions as a security posture manager and compliance auditor, gathering resource metadata from cloud APIs to evaluate infrastructure against security benchmarks. The tool provides auditing capabilities for AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and Kubernetes clusters and control planes. It distinguishes itself by decoupling data collection from analysis, allowing users to cache cloud configurations locally for offline auditing and iterative rul

This project is a security compliance tool and configuration auditor designed to evaluate Docker deployments against industry security benchmarks. It functions as a script-based scanner that identifies misconfigurations and vulnerabilities within both the host operating system and container settings. The tool specifically implements the Center for Internet Security standards for Docker to verify host and container configurations. It enables a hardening workflow by comparing system states against these standards to identify security gaps and document compliance status. The audit engine suppor

Kubernetes Goat is a security training environment designed for practicing the identification and exploitation of common vulnerabilities within an intentionally insecure cluster. It provides a controlled setting to simulate system exploitations, including container escapes, role misconfigurations, and server-side requests. The project utilizes scenario-based vulnerability deployment to create specific security flaws. It includes utilities for environment management that allow the cluster to be restored to a clean baseline by removing vulnerable scenarios, service accounts, and role bindings.

Terrascan is an infrastructure as code security scanner and cloud configuration auditor designed to detect security violations and compliance risks in cloud templates and Dockerfiles before provisioning. It utilizes the Open Policy Agent to evaluate infrastructure templates against both standard security policies and custom organizational rules. The project functions as a security guardrail within build pipelines, blocking risky deployments by integrating scanning logic directly into CI/CD workflows. It also includes a container registry vulnerability scanner that collects vulnerability data

This project is a multi-cloud security auditor and configuration audit tool designed to identify misconfigurations and vulnerabilities across various cloud service provider environments. It functions as a cloud security posture management tool and a vulnerability remediation engine, allowing users to scan resources against security best practices and industry compliance standards. The system distinguishes itself by combining detection with a remediation engine that executes corrective actions to fix discovered security gaps. It employs a plugin-based audit engine and a provider-agnostic abstr

CDK is a specialized toolset for container security auditing, container escape exploitation, and cloud infrastructure pentesting. It provides a collection of scripts and tools designed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in container runtimes to break out of isolated environments and execute commands on the underlying host operating system. The project features a dedicated Docker runtime exploit suite for abusing the Docker API, procfs, and cgroups to gain unauthorized host-level access. It includes specific techniques for bypassing isolation via LXCFS, user namespace exploitation, and ho

Cloudsploit is a cloud security posture management tool and multi-cloud security auditor. It audits cloud infrastructure for misconfigurations and compliance risks across multiple providers, specifically AWS and Azure, by evaluating resource configurations against a set of security plugins. The project functions as a cloud compliance scanner that maps infrastructure scan results to regulatory frameworks and security policy standards. It also serves as an automated cloud remediation tool, executing corrective actions to fix detected misconfigurations via SDK calls. The system covers resource

Prowler is a multi-cloud security scanner and security posture management tool. It automates security and compliance assessments across multiple cloud environments to identify misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. The project provides a multi-cloud security analysis engine that operates as an automated auditor, evaluating infrastructure against industry-standard regulatory frameworks and security benchmarks. It features a cloud security visualization dashboard that uses a graph database to map cloud inventory and visualize potential attack paths. Capabilities include automated cloud infrast

Falco is an eBPF runtime security monitor and cloud native detection engine that identifies abnormal behavior and security threats across hosts and containers. It functions as a Linux kernel event auditor, capturing system calls and kernel events in real-time to detect malicious activity. The system distinguishes itself through a rule-based threat detection model that evaluates system activity against a library of community-maintained rules and custom security definitions. It enriches raw kernel events with container and Kubernetes metadata to provide observability into isolated environments

Trivy is a comprehensive security scanner designed to identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across container images, filesystems, and infrastructure as code files. It functions as a software composition analysis tool and an infrastructure security scanner, providing automated checks for CI/CD pipelines and cloud environments to ensure the integrity of the software supply chain. The tool distinguishes itself through a modular, plugin-based architecture that allows for the independent inspection of diverse targets. It utilizes a declarative policy engine to evaluate configurations agai

A tool to scan Kubernetes cluster for risky permissions

KubeLinter is a static analysis tool that checks Kubernetes YAML files and Helm charts to ensure the applications represented in them adhere to best practices.

Gatekeeper is a Kubernetes admission control and policy enforcement engine used to ensure cluster resources comply with organizational security and configuration standards. It intercepts API requests to validate or reject non-compliant resources before they are persisted in the cluster. The project uses a parameterized policy library and custom resource definitions to create reusable templates and enforcement rules. It distinguishes itself through a hub-and-spoke management model, allowing a controller in a management cluster to enforce policies across separate target clusters. Beyond admiss

Security risk analysis for Kubernetes resources

kubeaudit helps you audit your Kubernetes clusters against common security controls

Prowler is a multi-cloud security posture management platform and vulnerability scanner. It provides tools for automating security audits, evaluating cloud infrastructure against regulatory compliance frameworks, and managing security assessments through a dedicated analysis dashboard. The project distinguishes itself by providing an AI-driven security context server that feeds structured data to AI assistants for automated risk analysis. It also employs graph-based attack path mapping to visualize potential lateral movement and exploitation routes across cloud inventories. The platform cove

Kubescape is a Kubernetes security posture management platform designed to scan clusters, manifests, and images for misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and compliance risks. It functions as a comprehensive security suite incorporating a compliance scanner, a container image vulnerability scanner, an admission controller for policy enforcement, and a runtime security monitor. The platform distinguishes itself through runtime-aware vulnerability filtering, which maps libraries loaded in memory to determine if vulnerabilities are actually reachable. It also integrates with AI assistants via a Mo

The Snyk CLI is a command-line security scanner that detects known vulnerabilities across open-source dependencies, proprietary application code, container images, and infrastructure-as-code configuration files. It also serves as a platform management tool, allowing users to configure organizations, users, SSO, and reporting from the terminal rather than the web dashboard. The CLI integrates directly into development workflows, enabling scanning within IDEs, build pipelines, and version control systems. It implements static analysis with interfile data flow analysis to find complex security f

Kyverno is a Kubernetes policy engine and cloud native governance tool. It functions as a policy-as-code framework that validates, mutates, and generates resources to enforce security and governance standards within a cluster. The project distinguishes itself through a declarative policy model that utilizes native Kubernetes custom resource definitions, allowing policies to be managed as standard cluster objects without custom code. It provides specific security capabilities for container image verification and signature validation to ensure only trusted images are deployed. Its broader capa

This project is a comprehensive Linux server hardening guide and infrastructure documentation resource. It provides a set of validated security baselines and step-by-step instructions for implementing security controls and configuration best practices to protect production environments. The guide focuses on aligning systems with industry-standard security benchmarks, specifically those provided by the Center for Internet Security and Security Technical Implementation Guides. It includes a framework for using OpenSCAP to scan system configurations, verify compliance against reference profiles,

Security-101 is a vendor-agnostic, foundational cybersecurity learning curriculum organized into modular, framework-aligned modules. It is designed to build core knowledge across multiple security domains without tying content to specific products or platforms, making it suitable for both beginners and professionals seeking a structured introduction to the field. The curriculum is built around established security frameworks, including the MITRE ATT&CK framework for standardized threat analysis and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework for incident response workflows. It covers a broad range of do

Naabu is a port scanner library and tool that probes hosts for open ports using SYN, CONNECT, and UDP methods to identify active services. It functions as a Go library for embedding port scanning into programs, and as a standalone tool that accepts targets as hostnames, IP addresses, CIDR ranges, or ASN numbers. The tool discovers live hosts before scanning, filters ports by range or top lists, and can integrate with Nmap for service version detection. The project distinguishes itself through its SYN-based port probing approach that sends TCP SYN packets and analyzes responses without complet

tfsec is a static analysis tool and security scanner for infrastructure as code, specifically designed to detect misconfigurations and compliance violations in Terraform and cloud infrastructure definitions before deployment. It functions as a cloud security policy engine that identifies vulnerabilities across multiple cloud platforms. The tool provides capabilities for cloud compliance auditing and scanning of Cloud Development Kit code. It supports custom security policy enforcement and allows for the definition of organization-specific security requirements. The scanner includes features

This project is a terminal-based dashboard for managing Kubernetes clusters. It provides a character-based interface that enables real-time monitoring and interactive control of containerized workloads, allowing users to perform administrative tasks such as scaling deployments, viewing logs, and managing port forwarding directly from the command line. The interface is designed for high-speed navigation, utilizing a keyboard-driven command system that maps input sequences to specific operational actions. It maintains an accurate view of the cluster state through asynchronous event polling, ens

Kubernetes-native security toolkit