gcloud-vertexai-secure-boot: Secure Boot Not Enabled for Vertex AI Notebooks

2025-08-01 gcloud-vertexai-secure-boot PoC Public

Description

Ensure that the Secure Boot security feature is enabled for your Vertex AI notebook instances in order to protect them against malware and rootkits. Secure Boot helps ensure that the system runs only authentic software by verifying the digital signature of all boot components, and halts the boot process if the signature verification fails. Secure Boot is disabled by default because of the third-party unsigned kernel modules that can't be loaded when the feature is enabled.

PoC

id: gcloud-vertexai-secure-boot

info:
  name: Secure Boot Not Enabled for Vertex AI Notebooks
  author: princechaddha
  severity: medium
  description: |
    Ensure that the Secure Boot security feature is enabled for your Vertex AI notebook instances in order to protect them against malware and rootkits. Secure Boot helps ensure that the system runs only authentic software by verifying the digital signature of all boot components, and halts the boot process if the signature verification fails. Secure Boot is disabled by default because of the third-party unsigned kernel modules that can't be loaded when the feature is enabled.
  impact: |
    Without Secure Boot enabled, notebook instances may be vulnerable to boot-level and kernel-level malware, including rootkits. This could allow unauthorized or malicious code to execute during the boot process.
  remediation: |
    Enable Secure Boot for Vertex AI notebook instances using the 'gcloud workbench instances update' command with --shielded-secure-boot flag set to true. Note that instances must be stopped before updating this configuration.
  reference:
    - https://www.trendmicro.com/cloudoneconformity/knowledge-base/gcp/VertexAI/enable-secure-boot.html
    - https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/workbench/user-managed/manage-instance
  tags: cloud,devops,gcp,gcloud,vertexai,security,secure-boot,gcp-cloud-config

flow: |
  code(1)
  for(let projectId of iterate(template.projectIds)){
    set("projectId", projectId)
    code(2)
  }

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 workbench instances describe tm-vertex-ai-notebook-instance --location=us-central1-a --project=$projectId --format="yaml(gceSetup.shieldedInstanceConfig.enableSecureBoot)"

    matchers:
      - type: word
        words:
          - "shieldedInstanceConfig: {}"

    extractors:
      - type: dsl
        dsl:
          - '"Project " + projectId + " has Vertex AI notebook instances without Secure Boot enabled"'
# digest: 4b0a0048304602210082e89eb94bc0d7ab464530e9adc73c736fa580813fb37e4c135b491da8598f13022100e361b6ec75ffff463f72c5ab9af82594fa3bac07639c3147ede1fa6c2374cb6c:922c64590222798bb761d5b6d8e72950

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References

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