Checkov Tool Catches 35 Security Flaws in 70 Lines of Terraform IaC Code

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) configurations written in Terraform can carry serious security vulnerabilities, just like application code, according to a developer experiment published on DEV Community. The author deliberately wrote an insecure AWS Terraform setup featuring a public S3 bucket, open security groups, an unencrypted database with a hardcoded password, and a wildcard IAM admin policy. Running Checkov, an open-source SAST tool maintained by Prisma Cloud with over 1,000 built-in policies, against just 70 lines of code surfaced 35 failed security checks in seconds without requiring any AWS credentials. The author then remediated all 35 issues and integrated the Checkov scan into a GitHub Actions CI pipeline to catch misconfigurations automatically before deployment. Similar real-world misconfigurations have been linked to major data breaches, including incidents involving Capital One and exposed US voter records.