Requirements

Prowler has been written in Python using the AWS SDK (Boto3), Azure SDK and GCP API Python Client.

AWS

Since Prowler uses AWS Credentials under the hood, you can follow any authentication method as described here.

Authentication

Make sure you have properly configured your AWS-CLI with a valid Access Key and Region or declare AWS variables properly (or instance profile/role):

aws configure

or

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="ASXXXXXXX"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="XXXXXXXXX"
export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN="XXXXXXXXX"

Those credentials must be associated to a user or role with proper permissions to do all checks. To make sure, add the following AWS managed policies to the user or role being used:

• arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/SecurityAudit
• arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/job-function/ViewOnlyAccess

Note

Moreover, some read-only additional permissions are needed for several checks, make sure you attach also the custom policy prowler-additions-policy.json to the role you are using. If you want Prowler to send findings to AWS Security Hub, make sure you also attach the custom policy prowler-security-hub.json.

Multi-Factor Authentication

If your IAM entity enforces MFA you can use --mfa and Prowler will ask you to input the following values to get a new session:

• ARN of your MFA device
• TOTP (Time-Based One-Time Password)

Azure

Prowler for Azure supports the following authentication types. To use each one you need to pass the proper flag to the execution:

• Service Principal Application (recommended).
• Current AZ CLI credentials stored.
• Interactive browser authentication.
• Managed identity authentication.

Warning

For Prowler App only the Service Principal authentication method is supported.

Service Principal Application authentication

To allow Prowler assume the service principal application identity to start the scan it is needed to configure the following environment variables:

export AZURE_CLIENT_ID="XXXXXXXXX"
export AZURE_TENANT_ID="XXXXXXXXX"
export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="XXXXXXX"

If you try to execute Prowler with the --sp-env-auth flag and those variables are empty or not exported, the execution is going to fail. Follow the instructions in the Create Prowler Service Principal section to create a service principal.

AZ CLI / Browser / Managed Identity authentication

The other three cases does not need additional configuration, --az-cli-auth and --managed-identity-auth are automated options. To use --browser-auth the user needs to authenticate against Azure using the default browser to start the scan, also tenant-id is required.

Needed permissions

Prowler for Azure needs two types of permission scopes to be set:

• Microsoft Entra ID permissions: used to retrieve metadata from the identity assumed by Prowler and specific Entra checks (not mandatory to have access to execute the tool). The permissions required by the tool are the following:
  • Directory.Read.All
  • Policy.Read.All
  • UserAuthenticationMethod.Read.All (used only for the Entra checks related with multifactor authentication)
• Subscription scope permissions: required to launch the checks against your resources, mandatory to launch the tool. It is required to add the following RBAC builtin roles per subscription to the entity that is going to be assumed by the tool:
  • Reader
  • ProwlerRole (custom role with minimal permissions defined in prowler-azure-custom-role)
  Note

  Please, notice that the field assignableScopes in the JSON custom role file must be changed to be the subscription or management group where the role is going to be assigned. The valid formats for the field are /subscriptions/<subscription-id> or /providers/Microsoft.Management/managementGroups/<management-group-id>.

To assign the permissions, follow the instructions in the Microsoft Entra ID permissions section and the Azure subscriptions permissions section, respectively.

Checks that require ProwlerRole

The following checks require the ProwlerRole permissions to be executed, if you want to run them, make sure you have assigned the role to the identity that is going to be assumed by Prowler:

• app_function_access_keys_configured
• app_function_ftps_deployment_disabled

Google Cloud

Authentication

Prowler will follow the same credentials search as Google authentication libraries:

1. GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable
2. User credentials set up by using the Google Cloud CLI
3. The attached service account, returned by the metadata server

Needed permissions

Prowler for Google Cloud needs the following permissions to be set:

• Viewer (roles/viewer) IAM role: granted at the project / folder / org level in order to scan the target projects

• Project level settings: you need to have at least one project with the below settings:

  • Identity and Access Management (IAM) API (iam.googleapis.com) enabled by either using the Google Cloud API UI or by using the gcloud CLI gcloud services enable iam.googleapis.com --project <your-project-id> command
  • Service Usage Consumer (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageConsumer) IAM role
  • Set the quota project to be this project by either running gcloud auth application-default set-quota-project <project-id> or by setting an environment variable: export GOOGLE_CLOUD_QUOTA_PROJECT=<project-id>

The above settings must be associated to a user or service account.

Note

By default, prowler will scan all accessible GCP Projects, use flag --project-ids to specify the projects to be scanned.

Microsoft 365

Prowler for M365 currently supports the following authentication types:

• Service Principal Application.
• Service Principal Application and Microsoft User Credentials (recommended).
• Current AZ CLI credentials stored.
• Interactive browser authentication.

Warning

For Prowler App only the Service Principal with an application authentication method is supported.

Service Principal authentication

To allow Prowler assume the service principal identity to start the scan it is needed to configure the following environment variables:

export AZURE_CLIENT_ID="XXXXXXXXX"
export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="XXXXXXXXX"
export AZURE_TENANT_ID="XXXXXXXXX"

If you try to execute Prowler with the --sp-env-auth flag and those variables are empty or not exported, the execution is going to fail. Follow the instructions in the Create Prowler Service Principal section to create a service principal.

Service Principal and User Credentials authentication (recommended)

This authentication method follows the same approach as the service principal method but introduces two additional environment variables for user credentials: M365_USER and M365_ENCRYPTED_PASSWORD.

export AZURE_CLIENT_ID="XXXXXXXXX"
export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="XXXXXXXXX"
export AZURE_TENANT_ID="XXXXXXXXX"
export M365_USER="[email protected]"
export M365_ENCRYPTED_PASSWORD="6500780061006d0070006c006500700061007300730077006f0072006400" # replace this to yours

These two new environment variables are required to execute the PowerShell modules needed to retrieve information from M365 services. Prowler will use service principal authentication to log into MS Graph and user credentials to authenticate to Microsoft PowerShell modules.

The M365_USER should be your Microsoft account email, and M365_ENCRYPTED_PASSWORD must be an encrypted SecureString. To convert your password into a valid encrypted string, run the following commands in PowerShell:

$securePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString "examplepassword" -AsPlainText -Force
$encryptedPassword = $securePassword | ConvertFrom-SecureString

If everything is done correctly, you will see the encrypted string that you need to set as the M365_ENCRYPTED_PASSWORD environment variable.

Write-Output $encryptedPassword
6500780061006d0070006c006500700061007300730077006f0072006400

Interactive Browser authentication

To use --browser-auth the user needs to authenticate against Azure using the default browser to start the scan, also --tenant-id flag is required.