Linux Containers: Future or Fantasy?

Architecture and Background

Aaron Grattafiori Principal Security Consultant, iSEC Partners/NCC Group Containers, a pinnacle of fast and secure deployment or a panacea of false security? In recent years Linux containers have developed from an insecure and loose collection of Linux kernel namespaces to a production-ready OS virtualization stack. In this talk, the audience will first learn the basics of how containers function, understanding namespaces, capabilities and cgroups in order to see how Linux containers and the supporting kernel features can offer an effective application and system sandboxing solution yet to be widely deployed or adopted. Understanding LXC or Docker use, weaknesses and security for PaaS and application sandboxing is only the beginning.

Vulnerability Analysis

Leveraging container technologies is rapidly becoming popular within the modern PaaS and devops world but little has been publicly discussed in terms of actual security risks or guarantees. Understanding prior container vulnerabilities or escapes, and current risks or pitfalls in major public platforms will be explored in this talk. I'll cover methods to harden containers against future attacks and common mistakes to avoid when using systems such as LXC and Docker. This will also include an analysis and discussion of techniques such as Linux kernel hardening, reduced capabilities, Mandatory Access Controls (MAC), the User kernel namespace and seccomp-bpf (syscall filtering); all of which help actually contain containers.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

The talk will end on some methods for creating minimal, highly-secure containers and end on where containers are going and why they might show up where you least expect them. Aaron Grattafiori (@dyn___) is a Principal Security Consultant and Research Lead with iSEC Partners/NCC Group. A jack-of-all-security, Aaron leads projects dealing with complex system analysis, mobile and web application security to network, protocol, and design reviews to red teams and other hybrid testing. With over nine years of security experience, Aaron utilizes a wide array of technology skills, historical research and security knowledge to consistently discover critical vulnerabilities.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

Aaron has spoke on a wide range of topics at security conferences such as Blackhat, DEF CON Kids, Toorcon:Seattle+SanDiego, ToorCamp, Source Seattle, EELive! and SecureWorld in addition to being a guest speaker at Stanford University. Prior to working at iSEC Partners, Aaron worked as a Security Consultant for Security Innovation and is a retired long time member of the Neg9 CTF team. This will be Aaron's 12th DEF CON, w00t!