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Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

Container Security Best Practices

The Container Attack Surface

Containers share the host kernel, which introduces unique security considerations. While containers provide process isolation through namespaces and cgroups, a misconfigured container can expose the host system to significant risk. Container security spans the entire lifecycle: build, ship, and run.

Build Phase Security

Use Minimal Base Images

Smaller base images reduce the attack surface by eliminating unnecessary tools and libraries.

UNSAFE: Large attack surface

FROM ubuntu:22.04

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y python3

BETTER: Minimal distribution

FROM python:3.12-slim

BEST: Distroless (no shell, no package manager)

FROM gcr.io/distroless/python3

| Image | Size | Packages | Attack Surface | |-------|------|----------|----------------| | ubuntu:22.04 | 77 MB | 600+ | Large | | python:3.12-slim | 120 MB | 100+ | Moderate | | gcr.io/distroless/python3 | 60 MB | ~10 | Minimal | | alpine:3.19 | 7 MB | ~5 | Small (uses musl libc) |

Scan for Vulnerabilities

Integrate image scanning into your CI/CD pipeline:

.github/workflows/security.yml

name: Container Security Scan

on: [push]

jobs:

scan:

runs-on: ubuntu-latest

steps:

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\- uses: actions/checkout@v4

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\- name: Build image

run: docker build -t app:latest .

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\- name: Scan with Trivy

uses: aquasecurity/trivy-action@master

with:

image-ref: 'app:latest'

format: 'sarif'

output: 'trivy-results.sarif'

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