Secure container Orchestration: A framework for detecting and mitigating Orchestrator - level vulnerabilities

This paper presents Secure Orchestration, a novel framework meticulously planned to uphold rigorous security measures over the profound security concerns that lie within the container orchestration platforms, especially in Kubernetes. The widespread adoption of containerized environments has raised concerns about the vulnerabilities at the level of the orchestrator. Secure Orchestration delivers a comprehensive approach by leveraging cutting-edge methods to detect and prevent the exposure of vulnerabilities from orchestrator misconfigurations, privilege escalation exploits that can thwart the orchestration security layer, and unauthorized access attempts targeting the orchestration system itself. In addition, it is further strengthened by deploying an Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS), which is responsible for actively monitoring the orchestration infrastructure. The IDPS utilizes sophisticated algorithms and mechanisms for detecting anomalies to continuously assess the orchestration environment for indications of intrusion, vulnerabilities, and anomalous activities. By using this proactive approach, the framework is able to rapidly identify potential threats and respond through countermeasures in a timely manner, thus greatly reducing the risks associated with orchestrator level vulnerabilities. Conducting a set of real-world experiments that closely simulate a variety of threat scenarios is imperative for empirically validating the efficiency of this framework. The obtained empirical results yield insightful revelations on the efficacy of the framework in accurately identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities, thereby ensuring the privacy and integrity of container orchestration systems.