Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
eBPF for Security Observability
Search
Liz Rice
June 24, 2022
Technology
0
1.3k
eBPF for Security Observability
As seen at DevOpsDays Amsterdam and KCD Berlin
Liz Rice
June 24, 2022
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Liz Rice
See All by Liz Rice
Unleashing the kernel with eBPF
lizrice
0
190
eBPF's Abilities and Limitations: The Truth
lizrice
0
380
Simplifying multi-cloud and multi-cluster Kubernetes deployments with Cilium
lizrice
0
200
When is a Secure Connection not encrypted? And other stories
lizrice
1
85
Keeping it simple: Cilium Mesh - networking for multi-cloud Kubernetes and beyond
lizrice
1
640
How Many Proxies Do You Need
lizrice
1
150
Beginner's Guide to eBPF Programming for Networking
lizrice
1
2.4k
Contributing to Open Source - what's in it for my business?
lizrice
0
58
Cloud Native eBPF Superpowers
lizrice
0
260
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
SmartHR プロダクトエンジニア求人ガイド_2025 / PdE job guide 2025
smarthr
0
190
Terraform Cloudで始めるおひとりさまOrganizationsのすゝめ
handy
2
200
更新系と状態
uhyo
8
1.9k
「経験の点」の位置を意識したキャリア形成 / Career development with an awareness of the “point of experience” position
pauli
4
110
アジャイル脅威モデリング#1(脅威モデリングナイト#8)
masakane55
3
240
QA/SDETの現在と、これからの挑戦
imtnd
0
150
Making a MIDI controller device with PicoRuby/R2P2 (RubyKaigi 2025 LT)
risgk
1
330
MCPを活用した検索システムの作り方/How to implement search systems with MCP #catalks
quiver
13
7.1k
Porting PicoRuby to Another Microcontroller: ESP32
yuuu
4
480
watsonx.data上のベクトル・データベース Milvusを見てみよう/20250418-milvus-dojo
mayumihirano
0
130
2025-04-14 Data & Analytics 井戸端会議 Multi tenant log platform with Iceberg
kamijin_fanta
0
100
AIエージェント開発手法と業務導入のプラクティス
ykosaka
9
2.3k
Featured
See All Featured
Designing Dashboards & Data Visualisations in Web Apps
destraynor
231
53k
Distributed Sagas: A Protocol for Coordinating Microservices
caitiem20
331
21k
[RailsConf 2023 Opening Keynote] The Magic of Rails
eileencodes
29
9.4k
The World Runs on Bad Software
bkeepers
PRO
68
11k
Facilitating Awesome Meetings
lara
54
6.3k
Unsuck your backbone
ammeep
670
57k
ReactJS: Keep Simple. Everything can be a component!
pedronauck
667
120k
Become a Pro
speakerdeck
PRO
27
5.3k
Put a Button on it: Removing Barriers to Going Fast.
kastner
60
3.8k
4 Signs Your Business is Dying
shpigford
183
22k
No one is an island. Learnings from fostering a developers community.
thoeni
21
3.2k
Product Roadmaps are Hard
iamctodd
PRO
52
11k
Transcript
eBPF for Security Observability Liz Rice | @lizrice Chief Open
Source Officer, Isovalent
@lizrice
@lizrice What is ? extended Berkeley Packet Filter
@lizrice What is ? Makes the kernel programmable
@lizrice userspace kernel app event system calls eBPF program Run
custom code in the kernel
@lizrice SEC("kprobe/sys_execve") int hello(void *ctx) { bpf_trace_printk("Hello World!"); return 0;
} $ sudo ./hello bash-20241 [004] d... 84210.752785: 0: Hello World! bash-20242 [004] d... 84216.321993: 0: Hello World! bash-20243 [004] d... 84225.858880: 0: Hello World! Info about process that called execve syscall + userspace code to load eBPF program eBPF Hello World
Dynamic changes to kernel behaviour
Dynamic tracing tools
@lizrice userspace kernel Tracing tool event eBPF program Use eBPF
to collect event metrics eBPF Map metrics load Gather & show metrics
@lizrice eBPF tracing tools from iovisor/bcc
@lizrice eBPF tracing - opensnoop ~/bcc/libbpf-tools$ sudo ./opensnoop PID COMM
FD ERR PATH 5040 node 21 0 /proc/5132/cmdline 5040 node 21 0 /proc/6460/cmdline 5040 node 21 0 /proc/6460/cmdline 6461 opensnoop 18 0 /etc/localtime 5040 node 21 0 /proc/5132/cmdline 5040 node 21 0 /proc/6460/cmdline 5060 node 23 0 /home/liz/.vscode-server/data/User/workspaceStorage/48b53 5040 node 21 0 /proc/5132/cmdline 5040 node 21 0 /proc/6460/cmdline 5040 node 21 0 /proc/5132/cmdline 5040 node 21 0 /proc/6460/cmdline …
eBPF and Kubernetes
@lizrice userspace kernel pod container pod container container One kernel
per host
@lizrice userspace kernel networking access files create containers One kernel
per host pod container pod container container
@lizrice userspace kernel app app pods networking access files create
containers Kernel aware of everything on the host
@lizrice userspace app kernel app pods networking access files create
containers eBPF programs can be aware of everything
@lizrice $ kubectl gadget trace open NODE NAMESPACE POD CONTAINER
PID COMM FD ERR PATH kind-2-control-plane default xwing spaceship 361876 vi 3 0 /etc/passwd eBPF tracing on Kubernetes - Inspektor Gadget Kubernetes info
@lizrice eBPF observability tools -
@lizrice eBPF observability tools - Cilium Hubble
eBPF observability
eBPF security observability
@lizrice Security observability
@lizrice Security observability
@lizrice What activity do we care about for security? eBPF
programs
@lizrice Syscall checks within the kernel
@lizrice TOCTTOU vulnerabilities with syscalls For more details • Leo
Di Donato & KP Singh at CN eBPF Day 2021 • Rex Guo & Junyuan Zeng at DEFCON 29 on Phantom attacks Attacker changes params after inspection
@lizrice Need to make the check at the right place
@lizrice Linux Security Modules • Stable interface • Safe places
to make checks
@lizrice BPF LSM • Stable interface • Safe places to
make checks + eBPF benefits • Dynamic • Protect pre-existing processes
@lizrice $ sudo ./chmoddemo & [1] 7631 $ sudo cat
/sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe chmod-7776 [001] d... 38197.342160: bpf_trace_printk: lsm path_chmod liz BPF LSM hook has kernel info populated SEC("lsm/path_chmod") int BPF_PROG(path_chmod, const struct path *path, umode_t mode) { bpf_printk("lsm path_chmod %s\n", path->dentry->d_iname); return 0; } Filename known to kernel
@lizrice BPF LSM • Stable interface • Safe places to
make checks + eBPF benefits • Dynamic • Protect pre-existing processes But needs kernel 5.7+ & Kubernetes context?
How stable is the Linux kernel?
@lizrice Cilium Tetragon • Safe places to make checks +
eBPF benefits • Dynamic • Protect pre-existing processes Uses kernel knowledge to hook into sufficiently stable functions Adds Kubernetes context
@lizrice Photo credit: Bibafu A Tetragonisca angustula bee guarding the
nest-entrance
@lizrice apiVersion: cilium.io/v1alpha1 kind: TracingPolicy metadata: name: "etc-files" spec: kprobes:
- call: "fd_install" … matchArgs: - index: 1 operator: "Prefix" values: - "/etc/" … Cilium Tetragon tracing policy + Policy “follows” file descriptor through read, write & close events
@lizrice $ kubectl logs ds/tetragon -c export-stdout -f | tetragon
observe 🚀 process default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 📬 open default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 📪 close default/xwing /usr/bin/vi 📬 open default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 📝 write default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 1275 bytes 📪 close default/xwing /usr/bin/vi 💥 exit default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 0 Cilium Tetragon observe Policy events Kubernetes info
@lizrice Combined network and runtime visibility
eBPF preventative runtime security
@lizrice Network policy → eBPF programs drop packets
@lizrice Preventative actions from user space
@lizrice Preventative actions from kernel
@lizrice $ kubectl logs ds/tetragon -c export-stdout -f | tetragon
observe 🚀 process default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 📬 open default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 📪 close default/xwing /usr/bin/vi 📬 open default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 📝 write default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd 1269 bytes 💥 exit default/xwing /usr/bin/vi /etc/passwd SIGKILL Cilium Tetragon observe Killed before write
eBPF security observability • Dynamic instrumentation - zero app modifications
• Contextual information, Kubernetes identity-aware • Option for runtime enforcement from the kernel
Thank you! cilium/tetragon @ciliumproject cilium.io | ebpf.io @lizrice