How to design access control strategy in container escape protection solution?

Designing an access control strategy in a container escape protection solution involves implementing strict permission management to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive resources and limit the impact of potential container escapes. Here’s how to approach it:

1. Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP):

   • Assign minimal permissions to containers and processes. For example, a container running a web application should not have root privileges or access to the host’s file system.
   • Use Linux capabilities to drop unnecessary privileges (e.g., CAP_NET_RAW, CAP_SYS_ADMIN).

2. Namespace and Cgroup Isolation:

   • Leverage Linux namespaces (PID, network, mount, etc.) to isolate containers from the host and other containers.
   • Use cgroups to restrict resource usage (CPU, memory, disk I/O) and prevent resource exhaustion attacks.

3. Seccomp and AppArmor/SELinux:

   • Apply Seccomp profiles to filter syscalls and block dangerous ones (e.g., ptrace, execve).
   • Enforce AppArmor or SELinux policies to restrict file and network access.

4. Read-Only Filesystems and Volume Restrictions:

   • Mount container filesystems as read-only to prevent malicious modifications.
   • Limit volume mounts to only necessary directories and use read-only bindings where possible.

5. Network Policies and Segmentation:

   • Use network policies (e.g., Kubernetes NetworkPolicies) to restrict pod-to-pod communication.
   • Deploy containers in separate network namespaces or VLANs to limit lateral movement.

6. Runtime Security Tools:

   • Deploy tools like Falco to monitor runtime behavior and detect anomalies (e.g., unexpected syscalls or file access).

Example:
A containerized microservice running in a Kubernetes cluster should:

• Run as a non-root user (securityContext.runAsNonRoot: true).
• Use a Seccomp profile to block ptrace and execve.
• Have a read-only root filesystem with a single writable volume for logs.
• Be restricted by a NetworkPolicy allowing traffic only to its database pod.

For enhanced security, Tencent Cloud provides Tencent Kubernetes Engine (TKE) with built-in security features like TKE Security Policies, Runtime Security Monitoring, and Host Security Protection, which simplify implementing these controls.