How Cisco Uses the Isovalent Platform to Secure Cloud Workloads

Cisco has integrated the Isovalent platform into our infrastructure to ensure our cloud workloads are protected without compromising on performance.

Secure Team Collaboration in EKS with Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper is a powerful tool designed to manage and implement policies across your EKS clusters, making cross-functional collaboration secure and efficient

Hackers Exploit OpenMetadata Flaws to Mine Crypto on Kubernetes

Threat actors are actively exploiting critical vulnerabilities in OpenMetadata to gain unauthorized access to Kubernetes workloads and leverage them for cryptocurrency mining activity. That's according to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team, which said the flaws have been weaponized since the start of April 2024. OpenMetadata is an open-source platform that operates as a

Researchers Detail Kubernetes Vulnerability That Enables Windows Node Takeover

Details have been made public about a now-patched high-severity flaw in Kubernetes that could allow a malicious attacker to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges under specific circumstances. “The vulnerability allows remote code execution with SYSTEM privileges on all Windows endpoints within a Kubernetes cluster,” Akamai security researcher Tomer Peled said. “To exploit

Secrets Sensei: Conquering Secrets Management Challenges

In the realm of cybersecurity, the stakes are sky-high, and at its core lies secrets management — the foundational pillar upon which your security infrastructure rests. We're all familiar with the routine: safeguarding those API keys, connection strings, and certificates is non-negotiable. However, let's dispense with the pleasantries; this isn't a simple 'set it and forget it' scenario. It's

RunC Flaws Enable Container Escapes, Granting Attackers Host Access

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the runC command line tool that could be exploited by threat actors to escape the bounds of the container and stage follow-on attacks. The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2024-21626, CVE-2024-23651, CVE-2024-23652, and CVE-2024-23653, have been collectively dubbed Leaky Vessels by cybersecurity vendor Snyk. "These container

Google Cloud Resolves Privilege Escalation Flaw Impacting Kubernetes Service

Google Cloud has addressed a medium-severity security flaw in its platform that could be abused by an attacker who already has access to a Kubernetes cluster to escalate their privileges. "An attacker who has compromised the Fluent Bit logging container could combine that access with high privileges required by Anthos Service Mesh (on clusters that have enabled it) to

Kubernetes Secrets of Fortune 500 Companies Exposed in Public Repositories

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of publicly exposed Kubernetes configuration secrets that could put organizations at risk of supply chain attacks. “These encoded Kubernetes configuration secrets were uploaded to public repositories,” Aqua security researchers Yakir Kadkoda and Assaf Morag said in a new research published earlier this week. Some of those impacted include two top blockchain

Discover 2023's Cloud Security Strategies in Our Upcoming Webinar - Secure Your Spot

In 2023, the cloud isn't just a technology—it's a battleground. Zenbleed, Kubernetes attacks, and sophisticated APTs are just the tip of the iceberg in the cloud security warzone. In collaboration with the esteemed experts from Lacework Labs, The Hacker News proudly presents an exclusive webinar: 'Navigating the Cloud Attack Landscape: 2023 Trends, Techniques, and Tactics.' Join us for an

Urgent: New Security Flaws Discovered in NGINX Ingress Controller for Kubernetes

Three unpatched high-severity security flaws have been disclosed in the NGINX Ingress controller for Kubernetes that could be weaponized by a threat actor to steal secret credentials from the cluster. The vulnerabilities are as follows -  CVE-2022-4886 (CVSS score: 8.8) - Ingress-nginx path sanitization can be bypassed to obtain the credentials of the ingress-nginx controller CVE-2023-5043 (

Fresh Wave of Malicious npm Packages Threaten Kubernetes Configs and SSH Keys

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a fresh batch of malicious packages in the npm package registry that are designed to exfiltrate Kubernetes configurations and SSH keys from compromised machines to a remote server. Sonatype said it has discovered 14 different npm packages so far: @am-fe/hooks, @am-fe/provider, @am-fe/request, @am-fe/utils, @am-fe/watermark, @am-fe/watermark-core, @

Alert: New Kubernetes Vulnerabilities Enable Remote Attacks on Windows Endpoints

Three interrelated high-severity security flaws discovered in Kubernetes could be exploited to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges on Windows endpoints within a cluster. The issues, tracked as CVE-2023-3676, CVE-2023-3893, and CVE-2023-3955, carry CVSS scores of 8.8 and impact all Kubernetes environments with Windows nodes. Fixes for the vulnerabilities were released on August

Malicious Campaigns Exploit Weak Kubernetes Clusters for Crypto Mining

Exposed Kubernetes (K8s) clusters are being exploited by malicious actors to deploy cryptocurrency miners and other backdoors. Cloud security firm Aqua, in a report shared with The Hacker News, said a majority of the clusters belonged to small to medium-sized organizations, with a smaller subset tied to bigger companies, spanning financial, aerospace, automotive, industrial, and security sectors

TeamTNT's Silentbob Botnet Infecting 196 Hosts in Cloud Attack Campaign

As many as 196 hosts have been infected as part of an aggressive cloud campaign mounted by the TeamTNT group called Silentbob. "The botnet run by TeamTNT has set its sights on Docker and Kubernetes environments, Redis servers, Postgres databases, Hadoop clusters, Tomcat and Nginx servers, Weave Scope, SSH, and Jupyter applications," Aqua security researchers Ofek Itach and Assaf Morag said in a

Kubei - A Flexible Kubernetes Runtime Scanner

Kubei is a vulnerabilities scanning tool that allows users to get an accurate and immediate risk assessment of their kubernetes clusters. Kubei scans all images that are being used in a Kubernetes cluster, including images of application pods and system pods. It doesn’t scan the entire image registries and doesn’t require preliminary integration with CI/CD pipelines.
It is a configurable tool which allows users to define the scope of the scan (target namespaces), the speed, and the vulnerabilities level of interest.
It provides a graphical UI which allows the viewer to identify where and what should be replaced, in order to mitigate the discovered vulnerabilities.

Prerequisites

1. A Kubernetes cluster is ready, and kubeconfig ( ~/.kube/config) is properly configured for the target cluster.

Required permissions

1. Read secrets in cluster scope. This is required for getting image pull secrets for scanning private image repositories.
2. List pods in cluster scope. This is required for calculating the target pods that need to be scanned.
3. Create jobs in cluster scope. This is required for creating the jobs that will scan the target pods in their namespaces.

Configurations
The file deploy/kubei.yaml is used to deploy and configure Kubei on your cluster.

1. Set the scan scope. Set the IGNORE_NAMESPACES env variable to ignore specific namespaces. Set TARGET_NAMESPACE to scan a specific namespace, or leave empty to scan all namespaces.
   
2. Set the scan speed. Expedite scanning by running parallel scanners. Set the MAX_PARALLELISM env variable for the maximum number of simultaneous scanners.
   
3. Set severity level threshold. Vulnerabilities with severity level higher than or equal to SEVERITY_THRESHOLD threshold will be reported. Supported levels are Unknown, Negligible, Low, Medium, High, Critical, Defcon1. Default is Medium.
   
4. Set the delete job policy. Set the DELETE_JOB_POLICY env variable to define whether or not to delete completed scanner jobs. Supported values are:
   
   • All - All jobs will be deleted.
   • Successful - Only successful jobs will be deleted (default).
   • Never - Jobs will never be deleted.

Usage

1. Run the following command to deploy Kubei on the cluster:
   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Portshift/kubei/master/deploy/kubei.yaml
   
2. Run the following command to verify that Kubei is up and running:
   kubectl -n kubei get pod -lapp=kubei
   
3. Then, port forwarding into the Kubei webapp via the following command:
   kubectl -n kubei port-forward $(kubectl -n kubei get pods -lapp=kubei -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 8080
   
4. In your browser, navigate to http://localhost:8080/view/ , and then click 'GO' to run a scan.
   
5. To check the state of Kubei, and the progress of ongoing scans, run the following command:
   kubectl -n kubei logs $(kubectl -n kubei get pods -lapp=kubei -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')
   
6. Refresh the page (http://localhost:8080/view/) to update the results.
   

Running Kubei with an external HTTP/HTTPS proxy
Uncomment and configure the proxy env variables for the Clair and Kubei deployments in deploy/kubei.yaml.

Limitations

1. Supports Kubernetes Image Manifest V 2, Schema 2 (https://docs.docker.com/registry/spec/manifest-v2-2/). It will fail to scan on earlier versions.
   
2. The CVE database will update once a day.
   

Kubernetes RBAC Exploited in Large-Scale Campaign for Cryptocurrency Mining

A large-scale attack campaign discovered in the wild has been exploiting Kubernetes (K8s) Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to create backdoors and run cryptocurrency miners. "The attackers also deployed DaemonSets to take over and hijack resources of the K8s clusters they attack," cloud security firm Aqua said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The Israeli company, which dubbed the attack 

14 Kubernetes and Cloud Security Challenges and How to Solve Them

Recently, Andrew Martin, founder and CEO of ControlPlane, released a report entitled Cloud Native and Kubernetes Security Predictions 2023. These predictions underscore the rapidly evolving landscape of Kubernetes and cloud security, emphasizing the need for organizations to stay informed and adopt comprehensive security solutions to protect their digital assets. In response, Uptycs, the first

New Cryptojacking Operation Targeting Kubernetes Clusters for Dero Mining

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered the first-ever illicit cryptocurrency mining campaign used to mint Dero since the start of February 2023. "The novel Dero cryptojacking operation concentrates on locating Kubernetes clusters with anonymous access enabled on a Kubernetes API and listening on non-standard ports accessible from the internet," CrowdStrike said in a new report shared with The