Container vulnerabilities and security best practices

Containers have been pretty much a part of the software world since the late 70s when during the development of Unix V7, the chroot system call was introduced. But we had to wait until 2006 to see containers become mainstream when Google developed process containers. Now, according to a survey conducted by Diamanti in 2018, two-thirds of the IT leaders surveyed say they either plan or are considering moving workloads from virtual machines to containers and two-fifths say they plan to replace virtual machines with containers.

System virtualization involves running multiple instances of operating systems required by a particular application on a single system. On the other hand in containerization, applications are encapsulated in a manner that will make them deployable in several environments. Containerization comes with a plethora of advantages for DevOps, including improved performance and reduced costs; however, the availability of applications to a broad spectrum of environments exposes them to vulnerabilities.

While most IT professionals believe that containers are immune to threats, the bitter truth is that they are not. Although Docker and Kubernetes systems, which are literally the names that come to everyone’s mind when we say containers, have high standards of security, containers often fall prey to attacks and security risks. So, it is essential to know the vulnerabilities present in the container ecosystem and how you can address them. Let us explore some of the major ones that can affect the performance of your containers and how you can take precautionary measures to avoid what may soon become a catastrophe for your business.

Shared Web Host Attacks

Shared web host attacks refer to containers on shared web hosts being attacked by unauthorized or contaminated containers. Here, the container may come in contact with a contaminated source accidentally or fall prey to a trap that was set up by an attacker.

Access Control Attacks

Access control is a crucial part of container security, be it data centers or cloud-based networks. Most suppliers provide access control options through an encryption key placed in the container registry. Using this key, a super-user can grant or revoke access to containers and give permissions to different users. A user or storage object viewer has the read-only permission whereas an admin has permissions to read & write or read & publish.

Access control attacks are simply those which can be directed by users having permissions that they are not supposed to have or attacks executed through spoofed credentials. Thus, it becomes critical in access management to revoke permissions of such users.

Container Image Attacks

Container images are building blocks of containers that consist of executable software packages. Most developers pull images from a repository and execute them without investigating whether they contain any threats. These images may be corrupted by an attacker and can contaminate other containers. Furthermore, attackers may gain …read more