Cloud-Native Security & eBPF Observability

The shift to microservices and Kubernetes has fundamentally changed the security landscape. Traditional perimeter firewalls are insufficient for dynamic, ephemeral workloads. Udero explores how eBPF is revolutionizing security by providing deep visibility and enforcement capabilities directly within the kernel, without requiring application changes.

eBPF: The Superpower

eBPF allows us to run sandboxed programs in the Linux kernel. It effectively makes the kernel programmable.

• Observability: Tools like Pixie and Hubble use eBPF to trace network calls, syscalls, and file access with minimal overhead, creating a detailed map of application behavior.
• Runtime Enforcement: Tools like Tetragon can enforce security policies in real-time, killing a process the moment it attempts an unauthorized syscall or network connection, preventing exploits before they succeed.
• Networking: Cilium uses eBPF to provide highly efficient container networking and load balancing, bypassing standard iptables complexity.

Kubernetes Security

Securing the orchestrator is as important as securing the workload.

Workload Hardening

We cover the implementation of Pod Security Standards (PSS), utilizing Network Policies to implement zero-trust networking between pods, and minimizing container privileges (running as non-root, read-only root filesystems).

Threat Detection

Using Falco to detect anomalous behavior based on system call patterns. We write and analyze custom Falco rules to catch sophisticated attacks like crypto-mining or reverse shells.

Supply Chain Security

The software supply chain is a prime target. We advocate for:

• SBOMs: Generating and analyzing Software Bill of Materials to understand dependency risks.
• Sigstore & Cosign: Signing container images and verifying signatures at deploy time using admission controllers like Kyverno to ensure only trusted code runs in your cluster.