5 Hunting in clouds

 

This chapter covers

  • Delivering cloud-native applications
  • Ensuring the security of cloud-native applications deployed using Kubernetes
  • Hunting in containerized-based environments
  • Collecting information from private/public clouds
  • Conducting a threat-hunting expedition in a public cloud Kubernetes infrastructure
  • Working with cloud-native data sets

As cloud-native applications become increasingly commonplace, it is increasingly likely that you’ll have to threat-hunt in the cloud. In this chapter, we practice threat hunting by conducting an expedition in a public cloud infrastructure hosting a cloud-native application. The chapter describes Kubernetes, identifies critical data sources in a Kubernetes infrastructure, and shows how to collect and use various cloud infrastructure events for threat hunting, highlighting the differences between virtual machines and containers. Finally, the chapter documents the threat-hunting play and walks through the steps of the threat-hunting process.

Understanding the underlying infrastructure and data sources is critical for a successful threat-hunting play and expedition. Although I describe the cloud infrastructure components involved in this threat-hunting expedition, I encourage you to access the external links in this chapter to learn more about public cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes-related concepts.

5.1 Hunting for a compromised Kubernetes infrastructure

5.1.1 Threat scenario

5.1.2 Research work

5.1.3 The hunting expedition

5.2 A short introduction to Kubernetes security

5.2.1 Security frameworks

5.2.2 Data sources

5.3 Threat-hunting process

5.3.1 Preparation

5.3.2 Execution

5.3.3 Communication

5.4 Exercises

5.5 Answers to exercises

Summary