Hacking Kubernetes: Threat-Driven Analysis and Defense

Want to run your Kubernetes workloads safely and securely? This practical book provides a threat-based guide to Kubernetes security. Each chapter examines a particular component’s architecture and potential default settings and then reviews existing high-profile attacks and historical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). Authors Andrew Martin and Michael Hausenblas share best-practice configuration to help you harden clusters from possible angles of attack.

This book begins with a vanilla Kubernetes installation with built-in defaults. You’ll examine an abstract threat model of a distributed system running arbitrary workloads, and then progress to a detailed assessment of each component of a secure Kubernetes system.

Understand where your Kubernetes system is vulnerable with threat modelling techniques Focus on pods, from configurations to attacks and defenses Secure your cluster and workload traffic Define and enforce policy with RBAC, OPA, and Kyverno Dive deep into sandboxing and isolation techniques Learn how to detect and mitigate supply chain attacks Explore filesystems, volumes, and sensitive information at rest Discover what can go wrong when running multitenant workloads in a cluster Learn what you can do if someone breaks in despite you having controls in place