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

Requesting a workflow in Kubernetes

In Kubernetes, the kube-apiserver processes all requests to modify the state of the cluster. The kube-apiserver first verifies the origin of the request. It can use one or more authentication modules, including client certificates, passwords, or tokens. The request passes serially from one module to the other. If the request is not rejected by all the modules, it is tagged as an anonymous request. The API server can be configured to allow anonymous requests.

Once the origin of the request is verified, it passes through the authorization modules to check whether the origin of the request is permitted to perform the action. The authorization modules allow the request if a policy permits the user to perform the action. Kubernetes supports multiple authorization modules, such as Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and webhooks. Similar to authentication modules, a cluster can use multiple authorizations:

...