CFRipper vs KICS

CFRipper is a free, open-source Python library and command-line security analyzer for AWS CloudFormation templates. It examines template files to help keep vulnerable infrastructure from reaching production. The CLI accepts templates as arguments and can return text or JSON findings, with an option to save results in an output folder. Example findings include wildcard principals and IAM role policies that grant excessive permissions. Rules can be configured with a rules file and filters folder, and users can add plugins for their own compliance checks. Documented exit codes distinguish successful scans, scanning errors, invalid templates, and unhandled exceptions. CFRipper runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, or as self-hosted software. The project uses uv for dependencies, provides installation instructions for those operating systems, and is distributed under the Apache License 2.0. Its analysis scope is CloudFormation; Terraform and Kubernetes are not supported.

KICS has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.