K8s Security 101

Container orchestration has been the driver for velocious software development and reliability engineering. But how to ensure the secure operation of your apps in a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster? This workshop gives a crash course about OCI, Docker and K8s basics. Afterwards, we take the perspective of a security auditor and attacker to attack and defend a managed EKS Kubernetes cluster together.

Container, microservices, Kubernetes, GitOps - all those terms dominate the modern software development teams and processes. In the first part of this course, you learn the technological basics behind all those terms. In the second part, you take the perspective of a security auditor and finally of an attacker and learn to attack and defend a managed Kubernetes cluster. Among others, you will gain answers for the following questions:

• How to work with Docker and Kubernetes?
• How to continuously deploy containers with GitOps?
• How to audit the security of a Kubernetes cluster?
• How to compromise a Kubernetes cluster?

All topics are guided by and demonstrated with practical hands-on exercises in a managed Kubernetes cluster (AWS EKS). At the end of this workshop the participants will have gained in-depth knowledge about the hardening and attacking of Kubernetes clusters and the impact of misconfigurations for deployed application architectures and the operation of a modern microservice infrastructure. The workshop ends with an attack and defense game where the participants attack other participants and defend themselves by applying their knowledge learned along the way.