2375, 2376 Pentesting Docker
Last updated
Last updated
The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere.
This info is from here.
containerd is a container runtime which can manage a complete container lifecycle - from image transfer/storage to container execution, supervision and networking. More information about containerd below.
container-shim handle headless containers, meaning once runc initializes the containers, it exits handing the containers over to the container-shim which acts as some middleman.
runc is lightweight universal run time container, which abides by the OCI specification. runc is used by containerd for spawning and running containers according to OCI spec. It is also the repackaging of libcontainer.
grpc used for communication between containerd and docker-engine.
OCI maintains the OCI specification for runtime and images. The current docker versions support OCI image and runtime specs.
Containerd was designed to be used by Docker and Kubernetes as well as any other container platform that wants to abstract away syscalls or OS specific functionality to run containers on linux, windows, solaris, or other OSes. With these users in mind, we wanted to make sure that containerd has only what they need and nothing that they don’t. Realistically this is impossible but at least that is what we try for. Things like networking are out of scope for containerd. The reason for this is, when you are building a distributed system, networking is a very central aspect. With SDN and service discovery today, networking is way more platform specific than abstracting away netlink calls on linux.
Note then that Docker uses Containerd, but it only provides a subet of the features that Docker provides. So for example ContainerD doesn't have Docker's network management features, nor can you use ContainerD alone to create Docker swarms.
Info from here****
Podman is an open source, OCI (Open Container Initiative) compliant container engine. It is driven by Red Hat and incorporates a few major differences from Docker, such as its daemonless architecture and support for rootless containers. At their core, both tools do the same thing: manage images and containers. One of Podman’s objectives is to have a Docker-compatible API. Hence almost all CLI (command line interface) commands from the Docker CLI are also available in Podman.
You may find two other tools in the Podman ecosystem: Buildah and Skopeo. Buildah is a CLI tool used to build container images, and Skopeo is a CLI tool for running operations on images, such as push, pull or inspect. Please check out GitHub for more information on these tools and their relationship with Podman.
The major differences
The greatest difference between Docker and Podman is their architecture. Docker runs on a client-server architecture, while Podman runs on a daemonless architecture. But what does that mean? When working with Docker, you have to use the Docker CLI, which communicates with a background daemon (the Docker daemon). The main logic resides in the daemon, which builds images and executes containers. This daemon runs with root privileges. The Podman architecture by contrast allows you to run the containers under the user that is starting the container (fork/exec), and this user does not need any root privileges. Because Podman has a daemonless architecture, each user running Podman can only see and modify their own containers. There is no common daemon that the CLI tool communicates with.
Since Podman does not have a daemon, it needs a way to support running containers in the background. It therefore provides an integration with systemd, which allows containers to be controlled via systemd units. Depending on the Podman version, you can generate these units for existing containers or generate units that are able to create containers if they do not exist in the system. There is another integration model with systemd, which enables systemd to run inside a container. By default, Docker uses systemd to control the daemon process.
The second major difference concerns how containers are executed. With Podman, containers are executed under the user’s privileges and not under the daemon. At this point, the concept of rootless containers comes into play, meaning that the container can be started without root privileges. Rootless containers have a huge advantage over rootful containers since (you guessed it) they do not run under the root account. The benefit of this is that if an attacker is able to capture and escape a container, this attacker is still a normal user on the host. Containers that are started by a user cannot have more privileges or capabilities than the user itself. This adds a natural layer of protection.
Note that as podam aims to support the same API as docker, you can use the same commands with podman as with docker such as:
Remote API is running by default on 2375 port when enabled. The service by default will not require authentication allowing an attacker to start a privileged docker container. By using the Remote API one can attach hosts / (root directory) to the container and read/write files of the host’s environment.
Default port: 2375
Note that in order to enumerate the docker API you can use the docker
command or curl
like in the following example:
If you can contact the remote docker API with the docker
command you can execute any of the docker commands previously commented to interest with the service.
You can export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://localhost:2375"
and avoid using the -H
parameter with the docker command
Sometimes you’ll see 2376 up for the TLS endpoint. I haven’t been able to connect to it with the docker client but you can with curl no problem to hit the docker API.
If you want more information about this, more information is available where I copied the commands from: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/abusing-docker-api-socket/
In the following page you can find ways to escape from a docker container:
Docker BreakoutAbusing this it's possible to escape form a container, you could run a weak container in the remote machine, escape from it, and compromise the machine:
If you are inside a host that is using docker, you may read this information to try to elevate privileges.
Check env (environment variable section) for secrets and you may find:
Passwords.
Ip’s.
Ports.
Paths.
Others… .
If you want to extract a file:
You can use the tool https://github.com/docker/docker-bench-security to inspect your current docker installation.
./docker-bench-security.sh
You can use the tool https://github.com/kost/dockscan to inspect your current docker installation.
dockscan -v unix:///var/run/docker.sock
You can use the tool https://github.com/genuinetools/amicontained the privileges a container will have when run with different security options. This is useful to know the implications of using some security options to run a container:
docker run --rm -it r.j3ss.co/amicontained
docker run --rm -it --pid host r.j3ss.co/amicontained
docker run --rm -it --security-opt "apparmor=unconfined" r.j3ss.co/amicontained
You can use a docker image of https://github.com/quay/clair to make it scan your other docker images and find vulnerabilities.
docker run --rm -v /root/clair_config/:/config -p 6060-6061:6060-6061 -d clair -config="/config/config.yaml"
clair-scanner -c http://172.17.0.3:6060 --ip 172.17.0.1 ubuntu-image
You can use the tool https://github.com/buddy-works/dockerfile-linter to inspect your Dockerfile and find all kinds of misconfigurations. Each misconfiguration will be given an ID, you can find here https://github.com/buddy-works/dockerfile-linter/blob/master/Rules.md how to fix each of them.
dockerfilelinter -f Dockerfile
You can use the tool https://github.com/replicatedhq/dockerfilelint to inspect your Dockerfile and find all kinds of misconfigurations.
dockerfilelint Dockerfile
You can use the tool https://github.com/RedCoolBeans/dockerlint to inspect your Dockerfile and find all kinds of misconfigurations.
dockerlint Dockerfile
You can use the tool https://github.com/hadolint/hadolint to inspect your Dockerfile and find all kinds of misconfigurations.
hadolint Dockerfile
You can use the tool https://github.com/falcosecurity/falco to detect suspicious behaviour in running containers.
Note in the following chunk how Falco compiles a kernel module and insert it. After that, it loads the rules and start logging suspicious activities. In this case it has detected 2 privileged containers started, 1 of them with a sensitive mount, and after some seconds it detected how a shell was opened inside one of the containers.
You can use auditd to monitor docker.