Hey hey!

Are you ready for your next DevOps challenge?

Last week, we all witnessed yet another terrifying cyber-security event, and this time, it was a direct hit - researchers from Snyk discovered a way to break out of containers! 🤯

The vulnerability was found in the fundamental component of the containerization ecosystem - the most popular implementation of the (low-level) OCI container runtime - runc.

Notice how, on the diagram above, most high-level container runtimes actually rely on the same low-level component. Shout-out to Podman for using an alternative implementation (crun) 💪

Unfortunately, Kubernetes and its derivatives are impacted, too. Containers on the cluster nodes are managed by a CRI implementation, and unless you live in the Red Hat universe (CRI-O), it likely means the same containerd ↔ runc joint.

The problem is that even though all of us have heard of Docker, Kubernetes, and some even about containerd, runc often remains a secret hero.

The widespreadness on the one hand and the lack of awareness on the other make the Leaky Vessels breakout vulnerability particularly dangerous.

People need to know their heroes, in particular, to be aware of their weaknesses. Hence, this week's challenge - Go learn what runc is used for in the containerization ecosystem 🧐

Good luck!