Mining sandboxes for Linux containers

• Main Authors: WAN, Zhiyuan, LO, David, XIA, Xin, CAI, Liang, LI, Shanping
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Linux container; kernel namespaces; resource allocation quota; system call interface; automatic testing; regular functionality; performance overhead; sandbox mining; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4528; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5531/viewcontent/Mining_sandboxes_Linux_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

A container is a group of processes isolated from other groups via distinct kernel namespaces and resource allocation quota. Attacks against containers often leverage kernel exploits through system call interface. In this paper, we present an approach that mines sandboxes for containers. We first explore the behaviors of a container by leveraging automatic testing, and extract the set of system calls accessed during testing. The set of system calls then results as a sandbox of the container. The mined sandbox restricts the container's access to system calls which are not seen during testing and thus reduces the attack surface. In the experiment, our approach requires less than eleven minutes to mine sandbox for each of the containers. The enforcement of mined sandboxes does not impact the regular functionality of a container and incurs low performance overhead.