Escaping Virtualized Containers
0Yuval Avrahami | Senior Security Researcher, Palo Alto Networks
Date: Thursday, August 6 | 10:00am-10:40am
Format: 40-Minute Briefings
Tracks: Cloud & Platform Security, AppSec
Containers offer speed, performance, and portability, but do they actually contain? While they try their best, the shared kernel is a disturbing attack surface: a mere kernel vulnerability may allow containerized processes to escape and compromise the host. This issue prompted a new wave of sandboxing tools that use either unikernels, lightweight VMs or userspace-kernels to separate the host OS from the container's OS.
One of these solutions is Kata Containers, a container runtime that spawns each container inside a lightweight VM, and can function as the underlying runtime in Docker and Kubernetes. Kata's virtualized containers provide two layers of isolation: even if an attacker breaks out of the container, he is still confined to the microVM.
Several Cloud Service Providers are deploying Kata in production to support customer multitenancy in their Serverless and CaaS offerings. With its focus on isolation, does Kata Containers actually contain?
In this talk, we'll put Kata's isolation to the test, and attempt to escape the container, break out of the encapsulating VM, and finally, compromise the host.
Black Hat - USA - 2020 Hacking conference
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