gcloud-vm-automatic-restart-disabled: VM Instance Automatic Restart Not Enabled

2025-08-01 gcloud PoC Public

Description

Ensure that Google Cloud Compute Engine service restarts automatically your virtual machine instances when they are terminated due to non-user initiated reasons such as maintenance events, hardware, and software failures. The Automatic Restart feature configures the virtual machine restart behavior when an instance crashes or it is terminated by the system.

PoC

id: gcloud-vm-automatic-restart-disabled

info:
  name: VM Instance Automatic Restart Not Enabled
  author: princechaddha
  severity: medium
  description: |
    Ensure that Google Cloud Compute Engine service restarts automatically your virtual machine instances when they are terminated due to non-user initiated reasons such as maintenance events, hardware, and software failures. The Automatic Restart feature configures the virtual machine restart behavior when an instance crashes or it is terminated by the system.
  impact: |
    Without automatic restart enabled, VM instances that crash or are terminated due to system events will not automatically recover, potentially leading to extended service disruptions.
  remediation: |
    Enable automatic restart for your VM instances. Note that this behavior does not affect any terminations initiated by the user, such as when the instance is taken offline through a user action like calling sudo shutdown.
  reference:
    - https://www.trendmicro.com/cloudoneconformity/knowledge-base/gcp/ComputeEngine/enable-automatic-restart.html
    - https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/setting-instance-scheduling-options
  tags: cloud,devops,gcp,gcloud,compute,reliability,automatic-restart,gcp-cloud-config

flow: |
  code(1)
  for(let projectId of iterate(template.projectIds)){
    set("projectId", projectId)
    code(2)
    for(let instance of iterate(template.instances)){
      instance = JSON.parse(instance)
      set("instanceName", instance.name)
      set("zone", instance.zone)
      code(3)
    }
  }

self-contained: true

code:
  - engine:
      - sh
      - bash
    source: |
      gcloud projects list --format="json(projectId)"

    extractors:
      - type: json
        name: projectIds
        internal: true
        json:
          - '.[].projectId'

  - engine:
      - sh
      - bash
    source: |
      gcloud compute instances list --project $projectId --format="json(name,zone.basename())"

    extractors:
      - type: json
        name: instances
        internal: true
        json:
          - '.[]'

  - engine:
      - sh
      - bash
    source: |
      gcloud compute instances describe $instanceName --zone $zone --project $projectId --format="json(scheduling.automaticRestart)" | jq '. // "false"'

    matchers:
      - type: word
        words:
          - "false"

    extractors:
      - type: dsl
        dsl:
          - '"VM instance " + instanceName + " in zone " + zone + " of project " + projectId + " does not have automatic restart enabled"'
# digest: 4b0a00483046022100b4895a6742c95935939c8a32186a178c403d0ce8b848f679bbfb0f90214693d4022100f1c8aa148c2979fe8e8d37c8f0f493b9b56d27b484cdf78a0bd50b8a4350971e:922c64590222798bb761d5b6d8e72950

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References

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