Container & Kubernetes Pentesting

Containers and Kubernetes broke a lot of long-held network assumptions. The pentest toolkit reflects that — image triage, cluster recon, IAM-style RBAC abuse, runtime breakouts. For defensive runtime see Runtime Security (Falco / Tetragon). For supply chain see Security Scanning (Trivy / Grype) and Image Supply Chain. For cloud-side IAM see Cloud Pentesting.

Cluster recon / external

• ★ kube-hunter (Aqua) — penetration-test for Kubernetes; finds misconfigured kubelets, exposed dashboards, etcd, anonymous API servers. Free.
• ★ kube-bench (Aqua) — runs the CIS Kubernetes Benchmark; "is this control configured?" Free.
• Kubescape (Armo, CNCF) — security posture / NSA-CISA hardening; compliance frameworks; SBOM. Free.
• kubeaudit (Shopify) — manifests / cluster scan for common misconfigurations.
• Polaris (Fairwinds) — best-practice manifest checker.

In-cluster / post-foothold

• ★ Peirates — k8s privilege-escalation toolkit; once you have a pod shell, it pivots to cluster-wide impact (mounts service-account tokens, escapes via host-path, raids namespaces). Free.
• Bust-a-Kube — vulnerable k8s playground (defender-side practice).
• Kdigger (Quarkslab) — context discovery tool — "what can I see / do from this pod?" Free.
• kubectl-who-can — who has permission to do X.
• rakkess — RBAC matrix view.
• MKAT (Datadog) — Managed Kubernetes Auditing Toolkit (EKS-focused).

Container escape primitives

• deepce — Docker escape enumeration.
• CDK (Container DevOps Killchain) — container privesc / escape toolkit.
• DEEPCE / amicontained — container detection / escapes.
• botb (Break-out-the-Box) — older; still illustrative.
• Known CVEs: CVE-2019-5736 (runC), CVE-2022-0185 (FUSE), leaky-vessels (Snyk 2024 runc / BuildKit).

Image scanning / triage

• ★ Trivy (Aqua) — vuln + secret + IaC; the default scanner. Free. See Security Scanning.
• Grype (Anchore) — alternative.
• dive — explore an image's layers; see what's inside.
• dockle — container-image linting / best practice.
• clair (RedHat) — older registry scanner.

Registry / supply chain

• cosign verify at admission — see Image Supply Chain.
• Sigstore tooling — see same.
• falco-driver-loader / falcosidekick — runtime detection plug-ins; see Runtime Security.

Cloud-managed K8s specifics

• EKS-specific: MKAT, IAM-policy-attribute analysis, pod-identity / IRSA review.
• GKE-specific: Workload Identity audit, GKE-specific node-IAM checks.
• AKS-specific: managed-identity binding review, RBAC drift.
• See Cloud Pentesting for cloud-side credential harvesting.

Network policy / runtime

• Cilium / NetworkPolicy editor (networkpolicy.io) — visualise / draft policies.
• kubesec.io — hardening score.
• Tracee / Falco — runtime detection of pod escapes.
• Tetragon — eBPF enforcement.

Lab / training environments

• Bust-a-Kube, Kubernetes-goat (Madhu Akula), Kubeoats, kctf (Google CTF), HackTheBox / TryHackMe k8s rooms.
• kind / minikube / k3d — local clusters for lab work.

Pick this if…

• External cluster pentest: kube-hunter + kube-bench.
• Compliance / hardening posture: Kubescape or kubeaudit.
• Post-foothold privesc: Peirates + Kdigger.
• Image triage in CI: Trivy.
• Cluster RBAC review: rakkess + kubectl-who-can.
• Cloud-managed K8s recon: MKAT (EKS) + cloud-side toolkit.
• Defender-side detection: Falco + Tetragon — see Runtime Security.