Understanding the Threats Against Cloud‐Based Containerized Environments
Abbas Kudrati, Sina Manavi, Muhammed Aizuddin Zali · 2025
Modern cloud-based container ecosystems offer organizations unprecedented flexibility and scalability, yet they also introduce an equally significant spectrum of security challenges. This chapter explores the nature of these risks, the evolving threat landscape surrounding cloud container platforms, and how security architects and technology leaders can proactively design resilient defenses. To guide threat modeling systematically, it leverages the MITRE ATT&CK framework, widely recognized for mapping adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world attack data. The chapter presents a technically robust approach to container threat modeling, aligning the MITRE ATT&CK for Containers framework with key architectural components such as the Kubernetes control plane, data plane, worker nodes, and supporting infrastructure. The Kubernetes control plane orchestrates the entire cluster, managing workloads, scaling decisions, and overall system state. Kubernetes networking enables communication across nodes, pods, services, and external endpoints.