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

Kubernetes entities as security boundaries

In a Kubernetes cluster, the Kubernetes entities (objects and components) you interact with have their own built-in security boundaries. The security boundaries are derived from the design or implementation of the entities. It is important to understand the security boundaries built within or around them:

  • Containers: Containers are a basic component within a Kubernetes cluster. A container provides minimal isolation to the application using cgroups, Linux namespaces, AppArmor profiles, and a seccomp profile to the application running within the container.
  • Pods: A pod is a collection of one or more containers. Pods isolate more resources compared to containers, such as a network and IPC. Features such as security SecurityContext, NetworkPolicy, and PodSecurityPolicy work at the pod level to ensure a higher level of isolation.
  • Nodes: Nodes in Kubernetes are also a security boundary. Pods can be specified to run on specific...