Provenance attestations

Table of contents

The provenance attestations include facts about the build process, including details such as:

Build timestamps
Build parameters and environment
Version control metadata
Source code details
Materials (files, scripts) consumed during the build

Provenance attestations follow the SLSA provenance schema, version 0.2.

For more information about how BuildKit populates these provenance properties, refer to SLSA definitions.

Create provenance attestations

To create a provenance attestation, pass the --attest type=provenance option to the docker buildx build command:

$ docker buildx build --tag <namespace>/<image>:<version> \
    --attest type=provenance,mode=[min,max] .

Alternatively, you can use the shorthand --provenance=true option instead of --attest type=provenance. To specify the mode parameter using the shorthand option, use: --provenance=mode=max.

For an example on how to add provenance attestations with GitHub Actions, see Add attestations with GitHub Actions.

Mode

You can use the mode parameter to define the level of detail to be included in the provenance attestation. Supported values are mode=min, and mode=max (default).

Min

In min mode, the provenance attestations include a minimal set of information, such as:

Build timestamps
The frontend used
Build materials
Source repository and revision
Build platform
Reproducibility

Values of build arguments, the identities of secrets, and rich layer metadata is not included mode=min. The min-level provenance is safe to use for all builds, as it doesn't leak information from any part of the build environment.

The following JSON example shows the information included in a provenance attestations created using the min mode:

{
  "_type": "https://in-toto.io/Statement/v0.1",
  "predicateType": "https://slsa.dev/provenance/v0.2",
  "subject": [
    {
      "name": "pkg:docker/<registry>/<image>@<tag/digest>?platform=<platform>",
      "digest": {
        "sha256": "e8275b2b76280af67e26f068e5d585eb905f8dfd2f1918b3229db98133cb4862"
      }
    }
  ],
  "predicate": {
    "builder": { "id": "" },
    "buildType": "https://mobyproject.org/buildkit@v1",
    "materials": [
      {
        "uri": "pkg:docker/docker/dockerfile@1",
        "digest": {
          "sha256": "9ba7531bd80fb0a858632727cf7a112fbfd19b17e94c4e84ced81e24ef1a0dbc"
        }
      },
      {
        "uri": "pkg:docker/[email protected]?platform=linux%2Farm64",
        "digest": {
          "sha256": "a9b24b67dc83b3383d22a14941c2b2b2ca6a103d805cac6820fd1355943beaf1"
        }
      }
    ],
    "invocation": {
      "configSource": { "entryPoint": "Dockerfile" },
      "parameters": {
        "frontend": "gateway.v0",
        "args": {
          "cmdline": "docker/dockerfile:1",
          "source": "docker/dockerfile:1",
          "target": "binaries"
        },
        "locals": [{ "name": "context" }, { "name": "dockerfile" }]
      },
      "environment": { "platform": "linux/arm64" }
    },
    "metadata": {
      "buildInvocationID": "c4a87v0sxhliuewig10gnsb6v",
      "buildStartedOn": "2022-12-16T08:26:28.651359794Z",
      "buildFinishedOn": "2022-12-16T08:26:29.625483253Z",
      "reproducible": false,
      "completeness": {
        "parameters": true,
        "environment": true,
        "materials": false
      },
      "https://mobyproject.org/buildkit@v1#metadata": {
        "vcs": {
          "revision": "a9ba846486420e07d30db1107411ac3697ecab68",
          "source": "[email protected]:<org>/<repo>.git"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Max

The max mode includes all of the information included in the min mode, as well as:

The LLB definition of the build. These show the exact steps taken to produce the image.
Information about the Dockerfile, including a full base64-encoded version of the file.
Source maps describing the relationship between build steps and image layers.

When possible, you should prefer mode=max as it contains significantly more detailed information for analysis.

Warning
Note that mode=max exposes the values of build arguments.
If you're misusing build arguments to pass credentials, authentication tokens, or other secrets, you should refactor your build to pass the secrets using secret mounts instead. Secret mounts don't leak outside of the build and are never included in provenance attestations.

Inspecting Provenance

To explore created Provenance exported through the image exporter, you can use imagetools inspect.

Using the --format option, you can specify a template for the output. All provenance-related data is available under the .Provenance attribute. For example, to get the raw contents of the Provenance in the SLSA format:

$ docker buildx imagetools inspect <namespace>/<image>:<version> \
    --format "{{ json .Provenance.SLSA }}"
{
  "buildType": "https://mobyproject.org/buildkit@v1",
  ...
}

You can also construct more complex expressions using the full functionality of Go templates. For example, for provenance generated with mode=max, you can extract the full source code of the Dockerfile used to build the image:

$ docker buildx imagetools inspect <namespace>/<image>:<version> \
    --format '{{ range (index .Provenance.SLSA.metadata "https://mobyproject.org/buildkit@v1#metadata").source.infos }}{{ if eq .filename "Dockerfile" }}{{ .data }}{{ end }}{{ end }}' | base64 -d
FROM ubuntu:20.04
RUN apt-get update
...

Provenance attestation example

The following example shows what a JSON representation of a provenance attestation with mode=max looks like:

{
  "_type": "https://in-toto.io/Statement/v0.1",
  "predicateType": "https://slsa.dev/provenance/v0.2",
  "subject": [
    {
      "name": "pkg:docker/<registry>/<image>@<tag/digest>?platform=<platform>",
      "digest": {
        "sha256": "e8275b2b76280af67e26f068e5d585eb905f8dfd2f1918b3229db98133cb4862"
      }
    }
  ],
  "predicate": {
    "builder": { "id": "" },
    "buildType": "https://mobyproject.org/buildkit@v1",
    "materials": [
      {
        "uri": "pkg:docker/docker/dockerfile@1",
        "digest": {
          "sha256": "9ba7531bd80fb0a858632727cf7a112fbfd19b17e94c4e84ced81e24ef1a0dbc"
        }
      },
      {
        "uri": "pkg:docker/[email protected]?platform=linux%2Farm64",
        "digest": {
          "sha256": "a9b24b67dc83b3383d22a14941c2b2b2ca6a103d805cac6820fd1355943beaf1"
        }
      }
    ],
    "buildConfig": {
      "llbDefinition": [
        {
          "id": "step4",
          "op": {
            "Op": {
              "exec": {
                "meta": {
                  "args": ["/bin/sh", "-c", "go mod download -x"],
                  "env": [
                    "PATH=/go/bin:/usr/local/go/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin",
                    "GOLANG_VERSION=1.19.4",
                    "GOPATH=/go",
                    "CGO_ENABLED=0"
                  ],
                  "cwd": "/src"
                },
                "mounts": [
                  { "input": 0, "dest": "/", "output": 0 },
                  {
                    "input": -1,
                    "dest": "/go/pkg/mod",
                    "output": -1,
                    "mountType": 3,
                    "cacheOpt": { "ID": "//go/pkg/mod" }
                  },
                  {
                    "input": 1,
                    "selector": "/go.mod",
                    "dest": "/src/go.mod",
                    "output": -1,
                    "readonly": true
                  },
                  {
                    "input": 1,
                    "selector": "/go.sum",
                    "dest": "/src/go.sum",
                    "output": -1,
                    "readonly": true
                  }
                ]
              }
            },
            "platform": { "Architecture": "arm64", "OS": "linux" },
            "constraints": {}
          },
          "inputs": ["step3:0", "step1:0"]
        }
      ]
    },
    "metadata": {
      "buildInvocationID": "edf52vxjyf9b6o5qd7vgx0gru",
      "buildStartedOn": "2022-12-15T15:38:13.391980297Z",
      "buildFinishedOn": "2022-12-15T15:38:14.274565297Z",
      "reproducible": false,
      "completeness": {
        "parameters": true,
        "environment": true,
        "materials": false
      },
      "https://mobyproject.org/buildkit@v1#metadata": {
        "vcs": {
          "revision": "a9ba846486420e07d30db1107411ac3697ecab68-dirty",
          "source": "[email protected]:<org>/<repo>.git"
        },
        "source": {
          "locations": {
            "step4": {
              "locations": [
                {
                  "ranges": [
                    { "start": { "line": 5 }, "end": { "line": 5 } },
                    { "start": { "line": 6 }, "end": { "line": 6 } },
                    { "start": { "line": 7 }, "end": { "line": 7 } },
                    { "start": { "line": 8 }, "end": { "line": 8 } }
                  ]
                }
              ]
            }
          },
          "infos": [
            {
              "filename": "Dockerfile",
              "data": "RlJPTSBhbHBpbmU6bGF0ZXN0Cg==",
              "llbDefinition": [
                {
                  "id": "step0",
                  "op": {
                    "Op": {
                      "source": {
                        "identifier": "local://dockerfile",
                        "attrs": {
                          "local.differ": "none",
                          "local.followpaths": "[\"Dockerfile\",\"Dockerfile.dockerignore\",\"dockerfile\"]",
                          "local.session": "s4j58ngehdal1b5hn7msiqaqe",
                          "local.sharedkeyhint": "dockerfile"
                        }
                      }
                    },
                    "constraints": {}
                  }
                },
                { "id": "step1", "op": { "Op": null }, "inputs": ["step0:0"] }
              ]
            }
          ]
        },
        "layers": {
          "step2:0": [
            [
              {
                "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.image.rootfs.diff.tar.gzip",
                "digest": "sha256:261da4162673b93e5c0e7700a3718d40bcc086dbf24b1ec9b54bca0b82300626",
                "size": 3259190
              },
              {
                "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.image.rootfs.diff.tar.gzip",
                "digest": "sha256:bc729abf26b5aade3c4426d388b5ea6907fe357dec915ac323bb2fa592d6288f",
                "size": 286218
              },
              {
                "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.image.rootfs.diff.tar.gzip",
                "digest": "sha256:7f1d6579712341e8062db43195deb2d84f63b0f2d1ed7c3d2074891085ea1b56",
                "size": 116878653
              },
              {
                "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.image.rootfs.diff.tar.gzip",
                "digest": "sha256:652874aefa1343799c619d092ab9280b25f96d97939d5d796437e7288f5599c9",
                "size": 156
              }
            ]
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}