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Securing the container environment

Escape Room

Article from ADMIN 81/2024

By Raul Lapaz

Implement a good, robust defense with an in-depth strategy of applying multiple layers of security to all components, including the human factor.

An escape room is an immersive team-building game in which friends or colleagues work together to solve puzzles and clues to escape a room before time runs out. Within the domain of Kubernetes [1] and Docker [2], one of the primary goals for malicious actors is seeking to compromise a pod or Docker instance. Once they find a way to escape to the host, they can gain root access, resulting in critical consequences – i.e., game over .

Securing the container means addressing multiple layers in the container's environment, such as access and control, internal permissions, network segmentation, vulnerability management, misconfigurations, and excessive privileges, among other things. Also, you need to differentiate whether containers are deployed within a cloud provider's infrastructure or as on-premises clusters, because each requires a different approach, such as identity access management roles, managed infrastructure, and so forth.

Comprehensive coverage of all these aspects would not fit in a single article, so my focus is directed toward various techniques that threat actors or penetration testers may employ to evade container defenses, especially escaping to the host to gain full access to the cluster. Understanding the tactics used is particularly beneficial for blue team members tasked with defense and implementing security controls.

Main Entry Points

To compromise containers, a door has to be open somewhere, so this task can pose challenges, particularly if the container is fortified with robust security measures. Some of the most common tactics that bad actors use to break into containers include:

1. Application vulnerability. Containers are frequently built from images, which can (and most often do) contain vulnerabilities. Attackers might exploit these

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