Tom Kranz, a security engineer at Pivotal, discusses whether containers can be secured in a Platform as a Service (PaaS). He emphasizes that security depends on context and implementation rather than features alone. Kranz outlines evaluating risk based on potential attackers, attack vectors, and data at risk to design a secure Pivotal Cloud Foundry implementation. Container isolation through technologies like Warden and Garden can help mitigate attacks by restricting access and network traffic, though apps themselves must also be developed securely. Overall, containers add security benefits to a PaaS but do not eliminate all risk.

1. © Copyright 2015 Pivotal. All rights reserved.
Can containers be secured
in a PaaS?
Tom Kranz
tkranz@pivotal.io
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2. © Copyright 2015 Pivotal. All rights reserved.
Introductions: who am I?
UNIX sysadmin
Technical architect
Principal Field Engineer
Account Manager
Security person
Get in touch on LinkedIn or Twitter
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Can containers be secured in a PaaS?
Maybe ….
Not about features
Context is important
And implementation is key!
And always remember:
You will get hacked. Eventually.
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So what’s the context?
Who are our attackers?
Where are they attacking from?
What are they attacking?
What data is at risk?
This gives us a risk profile we can use to evaluate the security of
an *implementation*
Evaluating the security of a product in isolation - without context
- is bad, and leads to bad risk profiles and poor decisions
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Who are our attackers?
Opportunists?
Someone with a grudge?
Professionals?
Nation states?
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August 2015 cyber attack stats
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Stats from http://www.hackmageddon.com/

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Where are they attacking from?
Internal or external?
What are they attacking?
Infrastructure?
Applications?
Physical location?
All of the above?
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SPARTA!

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What data is at risk?
Can use answers to the above to work out what data is
at risk and where it is
This can form your risk profile
This is what you can use to evaluate the security of an
implemented solution
Evaluate the implementation against the profile - not the
product against a checklist!
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Pivotal Cloud Foundry Architecture recap
Ops Manager UI
Ops Manager Director
Operations Manager
Service
Service Broker
Service Nodes
Service Broker
Service Nodes
Service
App Log Aggregator
Login Server
Dynamic Router
Cloud Controller
UAA
Health Manager
DEA Pool
Messaging (NATS)
Apps
Metrics Collection
Apps
HA Proxy LB
Elastic Runtime
Containers!

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Example: secure PCF implementation
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Why?
Leverage existing, tried and tested security solutions
where appropriate (isolation, firewalls)
Rely on platform security where appropriate
(containers, immutable infrastructure)
Change in application delivery also drives a change in
security mindset (application centric not server centric)
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Attack vectors - it’s the apps!
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Stats from http://www.hackmageddon.com/

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Impact of attacks
Attacker compromises app, gets access to core data
Nothing to do with the platform, nothing we can do to stop this
Mitigation: WAF, code audit to help write secure code
Attacker compromises app, gets local container access
If they break anything, BOSH destroys and re-deploys the
container
Can’t break out the container to root VM (the DEA)
Can’t sniff network traffic
Can’t pivot east/west to attack other internal PCF components
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Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.
OWASP Top 10:
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_To
p_Ten_Project
Make Jenkins do the work: https://wiki.jenkins-
ci.org/display/JENKINS/OWASP+Dependency-
Check+Plugin
Also look at Web Application Attack and Audit
Framework: http://w3af.org/
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Containerception
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Current tech: Warden
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Future tech: Garden
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More info at http://blog.pivotal.io/pivotal-cloud-foundry/features/cloud-foundry-container-technology-a-garden-overview

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Container security in PCF: the nitty gritty
Containers provide isolation of resources –
CPU, memory, file system, process space,
network
Containers have their own private network,
not accessible from outside the DEA
DEA
App App
App App
DEA
App App
App App

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Container Isolation
Routers forward requests from outside
using the app’s route to the assigned port
on the DEA, which does network
translation to the container’s internal IP
and port
Apps are prevented from communicating
directly with each other by container
firewall rules; they must communicate
through published routes
DEA
App App
App App
DEA
App App
App App
Dynamic Router
HA Proxy LB

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Warden/Garden networking in detail
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Container filesystems
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Garden
container
with
Buildpacks
Garden
container
with Docker
image

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Why a different container tech?
ie. Why not Docker? Again, context is important:
PCF treats containers as disposable
ie We don’t care about them, and neither should you
Therefore we don’t allow access to them
Fundamental difference in design principles - we can
lock them down much more tightly
To see the implications:
http://reventlov.com/advisories/using-the-docker-
command-to-root-the-host
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To summarise - Key points
Yes containers can be secured in a PaaS
This can mitigate some attacks, doesn’t help with others
Doesn’t mean your apps are secure
Don’t rely on technology to solve security issues
Build security into your apps from the start
Profile the risk and mitigate what you can
Remember not all risk can be mitigated
Context is important!
You will get hacked, response is key - whole other topic!
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THANK YOU!
tkranz@pivotal.io
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomkranz
@whoopsie
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