Writing a Go-Based Infrastructure Audit Tool

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Prerequisites
  3. Setting up Go Environment
  4. Creating the Audit Tool
  5. Running the Audit Tool

  6. Conclusion

Introduction

In this tutorial, we will learn how to write a Go-based infrastructure audit tool. This tool will allow you to perform an automated assessment of your infrastructure, helping you detect security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and potential performance issues. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a practical audit tool written in Go that you can use to evaluate your infrastructure.

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of the Go programming language. Familiarity with networking concepts and the command line will also be helpful. Ensure that Go is already installed on your machine.

Setting up Go Environment

To create the infrastructure audit tool, we need to set up our Go environment. Follow the steps below:

  1. Open your terminal or command prompt.
  2. Create a new directory for your project: mkdir infra-audit.
  3. Change into the project directory: cd infra-audit.
  4. Initialize a new Go module: go mod init github.com/your-username/infra-audit.

  5. Create a new Go file: touch main.go.

  6. Open the file in a text editor: vim main.go.

Creating the Audit Tool

Now that our environment is set up, let’s start writing the audit tool. The tool will check different aspects of the infrastructure, such as open ports, SSL certificates, and file permissions. The code snippet below is an example of how the tool can check open ports using the net package:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"net"
)

func checkPort(host string, port int) (bool, error) {
	address := fmt.Sprintf("%s:%d", host, port)
	conn, err := net.Dial("tcp", address)
	if err != nil {
		return false, err
	}
	defer conn.Close()
	return true, nil
}

func main() {
	host := "example.com"
	port := 80

	open, err := checkPort(host, port)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("Error checking port %d: %s\n", port, err)
		return
	}

	if open {
		fmt.Printf("Port %d is open on %s\n", port, host)
	} else {
		fmt.Printf("Port %d is closed on %s\n", port, host)
	}
}

In the above example, we define a checkPort function that takes a host and port as input. Using the net.Dial function, we attempt to establish a TCP connection to the specified address. If the connection is successful, the port is considered open; otherwise, it is closed. In the main function, we check port 80 of example.com and print the result.

Feel free to extend the audit tool with additional checks for SSL certificates, file permissions, network services, or any other aspect of your infrastructure you want to evaluate.

Running the Audit Tool

To run the audit tool, follow the steps below:

  1. Save the code in your main.go file.

  2. Build the Go program: go build.

  3. Run the program: ./infra-audit.

    You should see the output indicating whether the specified port is open or closed.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to write a Go-based infrastructure audit tool. We covered the setup of the Go environment, creating the audit tool, and running it to perform checks on various aspects of the infrastructure. You can further enhance this tool by adding new checks based on your specific needs. Automating infrastructure audits can save time and help ensure the security and reliability of your systems.

Published:

Related Articles