Red Hat Blog

One of the key components of a container-based architecture is security.There are many facets to it (just have a look at the list of topics in the official OpenShift documentation here), but some of the most basic requirements are authentication and authorization. In this article, I explain how authentication and authorization work in Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. I cover interactions between the different layers of a Kubernetes ecosystem, including the infrastructure layer, Kubernetes layer, and the containerized applications layer.What is authentication and authorization?In simple terms,

Confidential containers are containers deployed within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which allows you to protect your application code and secrets when deployed in untrusted environments. In our previous articles, we introduced the Red Hat OpenShift confidential containers (CoCo) solution and relevant use cases. We demonstrated how components of the CoCo solution, spread across trusted and untrusted environments, including confidential virtual machine (CVM), guest components, TEEs, Confidential compute attestation operator, Trustee agents, and more, work together as part of the soluti

Quay.io is Red Hat’s hosted container registry service that serves enterprise users, open source community projects, and Red Hat customers worldwide. One of the most used features of Quay.io, besides storing and serving container images, is the comprehensive security vulnerability reporting for any uploaded image. Because Red Hat is committed to making open source software more accessible, this functionality is also available on the free tier, provided by the Clair static vulnerability analyzer project.Clair allows users to analyze millions of container images and billions of layers, and pr

With the advent of Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs) in RHEL, a new challenge has emerged: Extending the Red Hat UKI (Unified Kernel Image) more safely and without compromising its security footprint. Starting with Red Hat 9.4, the systemd package (252-31 and onwards) supports UKI addons, which aim to solve this issue.In this blog, I explore the addons that enable safer extension of the UKI kernel command line.What is the Unified Kernel Image (UKI)?The linux kernel is the core of any Linux operating system. It's the interface between the hardware and the processes running on it, providing m

Secure Boot technology is part of Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification. It is a useful and powerful tool which can be used to improve boot time security of an operating system by only allowing trusted code to be executed on that system. The technology is not new—it was part of UEFI specification since v2.0 (2006), and it is extensively used by x86 hardware vendors today. In the cloud world, however, the technology only became available fairly recently:Google made Shielded VMs generally available in April, 2019Microsoft announced Trusted Launch general availability in No

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security Cloud Service graduates from limited availability to general availability! This release allows customers to access a fully managed software-as-a-service to help protect their containerized applications across the full application lifecycle in any major cloud environment. With this announcement, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security Cloud Service is now feature-complete and fully tested by Red Hat.We understand the need to move quickly and at scale in the application development lifecycle. With Advanced Cluster Security Cloud Service, the Red Hat team takes on the

Quantum and post-quantum, what does it mean?Quantum computing is an emerging technology that uses superposition, entanglement and interference to manipulate the state of a qubit (quantum bit) — this allows a quantum computer to evaluate multiple possibilities at the same time because it can hold the existence of opposing values in parallel (like Schrödinger’s cat experiment).This is exciting for the prospects it can provide in computing and at the same time terrifying in the volume of attacks and security breaches it could contribute to. Quantum computing will make attacks possible that a

In October 2023, Red Hat Product Security announced the publishing of Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) files, in beta form, for every single CVE ID that is recorded in the Red Hat CVE Database. Since then, we have actively collected feedback from our customers and discussed the best implementation with security scanning vendors. With this valuable input, we have worked on improving the production version of the files.We are pleased to announce that the VEX files are now ready for public consumption in production use cases. You can find these files in the following location:https://a

Good cyber security practices depend on trustworthy information sources about security vulnerabilities. This article offers guidance around who to trust for this information.In 1999, MITRE Corporation, a US Government-funded research and development company, realized the world needed a uniform standard for reporting and tracking software security bugs. MITRE worked with the IT industry to invent a concept called CVE, for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. The CVE concept caught on, and today, the industry acknowledges CVE as the universal standard for security vulnerability reporting.Softw

In today's networked digital world, application programming interface (API) security is a crucial component in safeguarding private information and strengthening the integrity of online transactions. The potential for attack has increased dramatically as a result of the growing use of applications that depend on APIs to communicate across systems and services.It's also important to protect against malevolent actors who try to take advantage of API vulnerabilities for illegal access, data breaches and service interruptions. Strong API security measures are needed to establish trust, reduce risk