Book Image

Learn Kubernetes Security

By : Kaizhe Huang, Pranjal Jumde
5 (1)
Book Image

Learn Kubernetes Security

5 (1)
By: Kaizhe Huang, Pranjal Jumde

Overview of this book

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration platform for managing containerized applications. Despite widespread adoption of the technology, DevOps engineers might be unaware of the pitfalls of containerized environments. With this comprehensive book, you'll learn how to use the different security integrations available on the Kubernetes platform to safeguard your deployments in a variety of scenarios. Learn Kubernetes Security starts by taking you through the Kubernetes architecture and the networking model. You'll then learn about the Kubernetes threat model and get to grips with securing clusters. Throughout the book, you'll cover various security aspects such as authentication, authorization, image scanning, and resource monitoring. As you advance, you'll learn about securing cluster components (the kube-apiserver, CoreDNS, and kubelet) and pods (hardening image, security context, and PodSecurityPolicy). With the help of hands-on examples, you'll also learn how to use open source tools such as Anchore, Prometheus, OPA, and Falco to protect your deployments. By the end of this Kubernetes book, you'll have gained a solid understanding of container security and be able to protect your clusters from cyberattacks and mitigate cybersecurity threats.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Kubernetes
7
Section 2: Securing Kubernetes Deployments and Clusters
14
Section 3: Learning from Mistakes and Pitfalls

Introduction to security boundaries

Security boundaries exist in the data layer, the network layer, and the system layer. Security boundaries depend on the technologies used by the IT department or infrastructure team. For example, companies use virtual machines to manage their applications – a hypervisor is the security boundary for virtual machines. Hypervisors ensure that code running in a virtual machine does not escape from the virtual machine or affect the physical node. When companies start embracing microservices and use orchestrators to manage their applications, containers are one of the security boundaries. However, compared to hypervisors, containers do not provide a strong security boundary, nor do they aim to. Containers enforce restrictions at the application layer but do not prevent attackers from bypassing these restrictions from the kernel layer.

At the network layer, traditionally, firewalls provide strong security boundaries for applications. In a microservices...