Kubernetes Cluster Audit in 60 Minutes with Open Source Tools

I was handed read access to a production Kubernetes cluster. 60 minutes. No insider knowledge. Just open source tools. Here's every misconfiguration I found 👇 🔴 7 containers running as root 🔴 2 privileged containers in production (one was a backend API — no reason for it) 🔴 A CI/CD service account with cluster-admin, created "temporarily" 8 months ago — still active 🔴 3 hardcoded secrets in plain env vars, likely sitting in a Git repo 🔴 Zero NetworkPolicies — every pod could talk to every other pod freely 🔴 No resource limits on 60% of pods 🔴 6 images running :latest — one had a known critical CVE 🔴 etcd backups configured but never tested 🔴 No admission controller — meaning every fix could be silently undone on the next deployment Kubescape final score: 47% compliance with NSA/CISA hardening guidelines. This wasn't a terrible cluster. It had TLS on ingress, secrets in Kubernetes Secrets, and separate namespaces for staging and prod. But 9 findings in under an hour — with just kubectl, Trivy, Kube-bench, Polaris, and Kubescape. All free. All open source. If you haven't audited your cluster recently, you might not like what you find. That's exactly why you should. 📖 Full write-up with every command, fix, and explanation: https://lnkd.in/dqSVQJ-3 #Kubernetes #DevSecOps #CloudSecurity #K8s #DevOps #CloudNative #OpenSource #Security

Kubernetes RBAC tends to be the part of cluster security that everyone nods at and few actually configure well. The example below discusses the model from the ground up, covering Roles, ClusterRoles, and the bindings that tie them to actual humans and workloads. It includes an emphasis on dedicated service accounts with resourceNames scoping, plus disabling token mounts on pods that never call the API. Setting it up like this can help close off a lot of the lateral movement paths attackers actually use in real incidents. InstaDevOps has put together this article which also discusses namespace isolation patterns, kubectl auth can-i for debugging, and OIDC integration with EKS access entries. Check it out! https://lnkd.in/ebFqS5mR

BlackDuck_SCA_CICD is your open-source GitHub repository showcasing a streamlined CI/CD integration for Black Duck SCA (Software Composition Analysis), empowering DevSecOps teams to automate vulnerability scanning in modern pipelines. Core Purpose This repo provides scripts, configs, and workflows (likely GitHub Actions or Jenkins-compatible) to embed Black Duck's Detect tool into CI/CD processes. It scans source code, binaries, containers, and dependencies for open-source risks, generating SBOMs for compliance and rapid remediation—ideal for AWS EKS, Azure, or Kubernetes environments. Key Features - Seamless Black Duck Detect integration for Maven, Gradle, or binary scans in pipelines. - Customizable for enterprise tools like Coverity upgrades or Falco runtime security. - Supports policy enforcement, reducing false positives and supply chain vulnerabilities. Professional Value - Developed amid your cybersecurity master's and roles at IBM/Harvard, it demonstrates hands-on expertise in secure pipelines—proven to accelerate scans and boost AppSec at scale. Fork, contribute, or adapt for your next project! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/eJ4dpGQg. Open to collaborations or DevSecOps chats! #DevSecOps #SCA #BlackDuckmend

🚨 Critical GitHub vulnerability CVE-2026-3854 enables remote code execution via a single git push, posing a severe threat to DevOps pipelines. This command injection flaw impacts GitHub Enterprise Cloud, including versions with Data Residency and Enterprise Server configurations. 📊 Researchers confirmed: • Exploitation requires just one git push command. • Affected environments encompass millions of developer workflows globally. • The vulnerability is rated critical with a CVSS score above 9.0. • Immediate patching is advised; unpatched instances risk full system compromise. • Potential attacker impact ranges from codebase tampering to persistent backdoors in CI/CD processes. 🔍 This flaw allows arbitrary command injection on GitHub servers, bypassing standard isolation safeguards. The attack chain exploits input handling failures during git push operations, making it especially dangerous in automated build environments. Defenders should prioritize updating affected GitHub Enterprise instances and auditing recent push activities for anomalies. 💭 The ease of exploitation combined with GitHub’s central role in software supply chains elevates this vulnerability to a top priority risk. Comprehensive patching and vigilant CI/CD monitoring will be critical to mitigating damage from exploitation attempts. #ThreatIntelligence #CVE20263854 #RemoteCodeExecution #DevSecOps #GitHubSecurity #IncidentResponse #SupplyChainSecurity #CyberResilience #InfoSec #SecurityOperations source: https://lnkd.in/gVAhqn2E

🔰 When the Whitelist works: Deciphering Kubernetes RBAC "403 Forbidden" Errors. A 403 Forbidden error from the Kubernetes API isn't necessarily a bug; often, it’s security working exactly as intended. A common but non-obvious production issue occurs when applications evolve, but their security policies (RBAC) do not. In one recent case, an application was updated to store database credentials in a secure Kubernetes Secret, moving away from a non-sensitive ConfigMap. The code was correct, but the Pod crashed on startup. The diagnosis required looking at the RBAC triplet—ServiceAccount, Role, and RoleBinding—rather than the application logs. The existing security Role was still configured to allow access only to configmaps. In the Kubernetes world, permissions are strict whitelists. If the resource (secrets) isn't explicitly listed, the request is denied by the API server. Stability was restored not by patching the code, but by explicitly patching the security Role manifest to include "secrets" in the resources list. This scenario underscores the fundamental principle of Least Privilege and highlights the importance of auditing RBAC consistency as part of every application deployment pipeline. #Kubernetes #RBAC #CloudSecurity #SRE #DevOps #EKS #TechnicalTroubleshooting

Kubernetes secrets are not actually encrypted. They are base64 encoded. That is just encoding, not encryption. Anyone with cluster access can decode them instantly. Early in my home lab journey I knew this, so I never committed secrets to Git. Seemed like the safe move. But the problem showed up when I needed to rebuild my cluster. No record of what secrets existed. No record of what values they held. Everything was gone. That is when I learned about SOPS with age encryption. The idea is simple. You generate an age key pair. The public key lives in your repo and is used to encrypt. The private key lives only inside your cluster and is used to decrypt. Nobody can read your secrets without that private key. The workflow looks like this: - Create your secret manifest with --dry-run=client -o yaml so nothing is applied yet. - Encrypt only the sensitive fields with SOPS using your public key. The YAML structure stays readable. Only the values are locked. - Commit the encrypted file to Git. Safe to push. Safe to share. - Flux decrypts automatically at deploy time using the private key stored in the cluster. The part that really clicked for me was what this means for rebuilding. When your cluster goes down, all you do is give Flux the private key and point it at your repo. It reads the encrypted secrets, decrypts them, and rebuilds everything automatically. No manual recreation. No trying to remember values. Your entire cluster state, including secrets, recovers itself from Git. The private key never touches Git. Ever. How do you manage secrets in your setup? 👇 Follow me, I am documenting everything I build and learn in my home lab. #Kubernetes #DevOps #Security #GitOps #CloudNative

"Evening reflection: Docker Engine v29.3.0 preview strengthens security and resource handling, securing container flows like reliable handshakes. Early notes: https://lnkd.in/gq4jTYFT In containerized environments, these keep deployments robust. Early preview features on your radar? Reply! #Docker #DevOps #Containerization #Security #CloudNative

Evening reflection: Docker Engine v29.3.0 preview strengthens security and resource handling, securing container flows like reliable handshakes. Early notes: https://lnkd.in/gq4jTYFT In containerized environments, these keep deployments robust. Early preview features on your radar? Reply! #Docker #DevOps #Containerization #Security #CloudNative

This week, I completely refactored the infrastructure architecture of my home lab and completed a massive DevSecOps migration. I recently transitioned my full-stack environment (Nebula Forge) off a heavy, monolithic Ubuntu VM—which had been natively hosting monitoring tools like Grafana and Prometheus alongside my applications—and re-engineered the entire pipeline to run on a highly optimized Proxmox LXC container acting as a centralized Docker Host. Moving from traditional package installations to an isolated, containerized microservice architecture brought several massive advantages to the environment: 📉 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Swapping a thick Ubuntu VM for a minimalistic Debian LXC eliminated the resource contention between the hypervisor and the VM. The compute and memory footprint has been drastically reduced, freeing up valuable hardware resources for future scaling. 🔒 𝐙𝐞𝐫𝐨-𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 & 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐒𝐞𝐠𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: By utilizing Docker networks and redirecting Cloudflare Zero Trust Tunnels, I completely bypassed traditional pfSense NAT port forwarding. The internal applications are deeply segmented, and the public perimeter is locked down. 🧩 𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Managing a multi-database environment (MySQL and MongoDB), a Spring Boot backend, a Go API Gateway, and high-availability frontends is now centralized through Portainer, providing distinct container isolation without the overhead. 💾 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲: The old VM setup was a massive data hog. Containerizing the apps and mapping persistent volumes allows for highly efficient snapshotting and makes adhering to strict 3-2-1 backup procedures significantly easier and faster. During the migration, I also successfully untangled hardcoded port conflicts, implemented a "cold standby" high-availability frontend, and navigated live database credential rotations via CLI to bring the Spring Boot environment fully online with zero data loss. There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of watching a complex transaction flow securely from the public internet, through a Cloudflare tunnel, into a containerized Java backend, and commit perfectly across both relational and NoSQL databases. On to the next challenge! #DevSecOps #DevOps #PlatformEngineering #CloudSecurity #SRE #SiteReliabilityEngineering #Proxmox #Docker #Cloudflare #InfrastructureAsCode #CyberSecurity #CI_CD #TechHomeLab

Kubernetes SecurityContext Explained 🚀 SecurityContext is one of the most important and most ignored parts of Kubernetes security. It works in Pod and Container Level. 𝗣𝗼𝗱-𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹: This security context applies to all the containers in the pod. It acts as a default for all containers in the Pod. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿-𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 : This security context applies to individual containers that overrides the pod-level settings for that specific container. We created a practical guide that covers, - Why running containers as non-root is important - Default UID Assigned To Pods - Pod vs Container SecurityContext (with examples) - How Kubernetes treats container images with and without non-root users. 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲: https://lnkd.in/gHUE59Hu What is your approach to enforce non-root containers? - SecurityContext only? - Admission controllers? - Tools like Kyverno or OPA? Or… is this still not enforced in your setup? :) Comment below! #devops #kubernetes #security