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Sandboxes, Seccomp, and Syscalls: Chasing Isolation in Kubernetes (Mark Manning)

on YouTube 43m
Talkat BSidesSF 2026 · on Sunday, 2026-03-22· at 13:15· AMC Theatre 09, AMC at Metreon· [security, kubernetes]

speaker

name:Mark Manning
x:antitree

resources

video:https://youtu.be/AKimmv-OYgE
slides:none on file

summary

Covers practical limits of seccomp for Kubernetes: tracing tools (strace, Inspector Gadget, tracie) give inconsistent syscall sets across the same image, a hello world goes from 170 syscalls in process trace to 1,811 syscalls in a container, and a 100-image audit via seccompare shows many profiles add dangerous calls. Demonstrates real bypasses (network blocked by seccomp but allowed via IO_uring), and compares options — tighten profiles carefully or use microVMs/GVisor for stronger isolation.

AI-written summary · about

chapters (36)

  1. 0:00Introduction and speaker intro
  2. 1:05Why Kubernetes needs sandboxing
  3. 3:12Containers aren't security boundaries
  4. 4:58Google's hardened runtime story
  5. 6:00Kubernetes hard mode explained
  6. 8:06Modern attack trends in Kubernetes
  7. 10:12What is a sandbox?
  8. 11:18System calls crash course
  9. 12:19Seccomp history and basics
  10. 13:42Seccomp demo in Kubernetes
  11. 14:22The myth of custom seccomp profiles
  12. 15:25Real-world seccomp profile example
  13. 16:47System call tracing challenges
  14. 18:10Generating seccomp profiles
  15. 19:57Tooling inconsistencies in tracing
  16. 21:44Three perils of seccomp filtering
  17. 23:07Measuring seccomp effectiveness
  18. 24:11Introducing SEC Compare
  19. 25:15Dangerous vs benign system calls
  20. 26:18Evaluating seccomp profiles
  21. 27:42Operational burden of seccomp
  22. 28:04Privileged vs capabilities comparison
  23. 30:12Seccomp bypass scenarios
  24. 30:33IO ring bypass explained
  25. 32:38Validating seccomp efforts
  26. 34:02Alternatives to seccomp
  27. 35:26Prevalence of privileged workloads
  28. 36:32Hardening privileged containers
  29. 36:53Virtualization vs containers
  30. 37:57MicroVMs and G Visor
  31. 38:18Choosing the right runtime
  32. 39:20When to use seccomp properly
  33. 40:02Practical complexity is a peacetime disease
  34. 40:43One is none and two is one
  35. 41:25Google's G Visor origin story
  36. 42:09Q&A session

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