gitleaks-fips

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for gitleaks-fips

Gitleaks is a tool for detecting hardcoded secrets like passwords, API keys, and tokens in git repositories, files, and stdin.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

Chainguard's Gitleaks FIPS image is comparable to the upstream zricethezav/gitleaks and ghcr.io/gitleaks/gitleaks images and uses the same gitleaks entrypoint and / working directory. It differs from the upstream image in the following ways:

• Gitleaks is built with a FIPS-enabled Go toolchain that uses the OpenSSL FIPS provider as its preferred cryptographic backend, as described in FIPS Support below.
• The image runs as the nonroot user (UID 65532) by default, while the upstream image runs as root. Mounted repositories and directories must be readable by UID 65532, and any --report-path you write inside the container must be writable by it.
• The upstream image runs git config --global --add safe.directory '*' at build time. This image sets the same option through the GIT_CONFIG_COUNT, GIT_CONFIG_KEY_0, and GIT_CONFIG_VALUE_0 environment variables, so git can read mounted repositories owned by a different user.
• The image includes git and openssh-client but no shell. Run gitleaks subcommands directly, or use the -dev variant if you need a shell for debugging.

FIPS Support

This variant builds Gitleaks with Chainguard's FIPS Go toolchain. Its preferred cryptographic backend is the system OpenSSL library with the Chainguard FIPS Provider for OpenSSL, which the image ships together with the openssl-config-fipshardened configuration that enforces FIPS mode for that provider. If the OpenSSL provider cannot be loaded, the toolchain falls back to the embedded Go FIPS module rather than to non-FIPS cryptography. See Chainguard's FIPS guidance for details about FIPS support in Chainguard Containers.

Set GODEBUG=cgr_verbose=1 to print the backend Gitleaks selected:

docker run --rm -e GODEBUG=cgr_verbose=1 cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest version 2>&1 | head -1

The output is cgr_fips: openssl when the OpenSSL FIPS provider is in use, or cgr_fips: openssl attempted, fallback to geomys: <reason> when the toolchain fell back to the embedded Go FIPS module.

The bundled self-test checks the OpenSSL FIPS provider itself, not which module Gitleaks selected:

docker run --rm --entrypoint openssl-fips-test cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest

The output names the Chainguard FIPS Provider for OpenSSL and its CMVP certificate, and ends with Lifecycle assurance satisfied.

Getting Started

The image entrypoint is gitleaks, so pass subcommands and flags directly. Confirm the image runs:

docker run --rm cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest version

Scan the git history of the repository in the current directory:

docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)":/repo cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest git /repo

Scan a directory or file without git history:

docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)":/scan cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest dir /scan

Scan content piped through stdin and print a JSON report to stdout:

echo 'github_token = ghp_wWPw5k4aXcaajCqbDsLRnJZZzVLgLO0M1234' | \
  docker run --rm -i cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest \
  stdin --report-format json --report-path -

Gitleaks exits with status 1 when it finds a leak, which makes it suitable as a CI gate. Use --exit-code to choose a different status if you need to tell leaks apart from other failures.

Configuration

Gitleaks reads its rules from a TOML file. A common case is keeping the default rules while ignoring test fixtures that intentionally contain fake secrets. Create a .gitleaks.toml file in the repository root:

[extend]
useDefault = true

[[allowlists]]
description = "Ignore test fixtures"
paths = ['''testdata/''']

Mount the repository and point Gitleaks at the file with --config:

docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)":/repo cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitleaks-fips:latest \
  git /repo --config /repo/.gitleaks.toml

Extending the default configuration keeps upstream rule updates while limiting the exception to paths you trust.

Documentation and Resources

• Gitleaks project and documentation
• Gitleaks configuration reference
• Chainguard FIPS container images

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.