Protecting Cloud Native Workloads on GKE Autopilot

GKE Autopilot is a new mode of operation in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) launched earlier this year to help DevOps teams focus their time and resources on building applications on Kubernetes, rather than on managing the infrastructure that the applications run on. As Aqua Security is a GKE selected security partner, customers can now run the Aqua platform seamlessly on a GKE Autopilot cluster. This can allow them to address …

Like clockwork, a new Kubernetes release is upon us, with loads of interesting new features. A couple of the key features in Kubernetes 1.23 are hitting the beta level and will be enabled by default. In this post, we’ll explain what they mean for security, both in terms of improving cluster security and what you …

For many years, threat actors have been using legitimate remote access tools (RATs) in their campaigns, tricking users into installing them to get full control over the victims’ systems. Similarly, in the cloud native world, attackers are increasingly targeting user interface (UI) tools to gain access to Docker and Kubernetes instances. In this blog, we’ll …

Despite best efforts to harden Kubernetes environments, prevention will never be enough and attackers are finding ways to evade shift-left and other preventative capabilities. It is critical to be able to detect and respond in real time to attacks within Kubernetes clusters. Tracee, an open source runtime security tool, is a great way to get up …

One of the main challenges developers face is how to manage security risks when deploying applications to Kubernetes clusters. A great way to address this early is by applying security hardening to the application manifests during the development process. In this post, we run down 10 ways that developers can apply hardening to their applications.

Even with Kubernetes’ new, longer release cycle in place, it doesn’t seem long since the last version came along with all its new features, but 1.22 is upon us. As ever, there’s an interesting mix of new features that are starting their maturation process as alpha releases and other features that are graduating to beta …

One of the challenges with container security and its standards is keeping current with new releases and products. New versions of the Docker and Kubernetes CIS Benchmarks were released recently to capture changes in the new versions of those projects, both to keep things current and to expand coverage to help people keep their environments …

With the move to cloud native development comes potentially increased risk of services that are exposed to the Internet and can easily be discovered by attackers. When combined with the fast pace of change in Kubernetes versions, there’s real risk of being one vulnerability away from a security incident. Recently I carried out some research …

In April, MITRE published the ATT&CK matrix for Containers covering adversarial techniques that target container technologies. At Aqua, we were proud to support this effort by sharing our knowledge and helping refine and extend the matrix. As for the risks in Kubernetes, Microsoft created a framework for Azure-based environments (AKS), but what about vanilla K8s? …

When you’re operating Kubernetes clusters, an important area of focus is in ensuring your authorization model is correct and provides users with the least privileges needed for them to carry out their roles. As such, blanket cluster-admin privileges should never be used and in particular the in-built system:masters group should be avoided.

One of the challenges of managing containerized environments is how to store sensitive information that’s needed for the operation of the applications running in those environments. Kubernetes provides a built-in secrets object type, but a common comment about them is that, from a technical standpoint, they’re just the same as other object types like Config …

As with every new Kubernetes release there are a great number of new features, however there are a couple of key changes which could have impacts to security and are worth looking at in more details. In addition to the deprecation of PodSecurityPolicies, we’ll also look at some newly promoted features being put in place …