security-profiles-operator

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for security-profiles-operator

Minimal Security Profiles Operator image for managing seccomp, SELinux and AppArmor profiles in Kubernetes

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/security-profiles-operator:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

Chainguard's Security Profiles Operator container is a drop-in replacement for the upstream image, with one layout difference. Upstream copies security-profiles-operator and spoc to / and sets PATH=/; this container installs them under /usr/bin and keeps /security-profiles-operator and /spoc as symlinks, so the upstream entrypoint and any script that calls those paths still work. PATH starts with / and keeps the standard directories after it, so a bare security-profiles-operator or spoc resolves as it does upstream.

The container runs as uid 65535, matching upstream. The operator reuses its own Deployment image for the spod DaemonSet, the non-root-enabler init container, and the webhook, so a single image reference covers every workload the operator creates.

Prerequisites

A Kubernetes cluster and kubectl access with permission to install CRDs and cluster-scoped RBAC. The operator installs seccomp profiles onto nodes through a privileged DaemonSet, so nodes must allow privileged pods. See the upstream installation guide for the full requirements.

Getting Started

Confirm the version the container ships:

docker run --rm cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/security-profiles-operator:latest --version

Deploy the operator with the upstream Helm chart, pointing it at this container. Create a values file:

spoImage:
  registry: cgr.dev
  repository: ORGANIZATION/security-profiles-operator
  tag: latest

Then install the chart from the upstream release:

helm install security-profiles-operator \
  https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/security-profiles-operator/releases/download/v1.0.1/security-profiles-operator-1.0.1.tgz \
  --namespace security-profiles-operator --create-namespace \
  --values values.yaml

Once the operator is available, it reconciles a SecurityProfilesOperatorDaemon named spod into a DaemonSet that writes profiles onto each node:

kubectl rollout status ds/spod -n security-profiles-operator

Install a seccomp profile and read back the path the daemon wrote:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security-profiles-operator.x-k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: SeccompProfile
metadata:
  name: allow-all
spec:
  defaultAction: SCMP_ACT_ALLOW
EOF
kubectl get seccompprofile allow-all -o jsonpath='{.status.localhostProfile}'

Attach that value to a workload through its security context:

securityContext:
  seccompProfile:
    type: Localhost
    localhostProfile: operator/allow-all.json

Configuration

The chart disables the optional subsystems by default: SELinux, AppArmor, the log enricher, and the eBPF recorder. Enable only what a cluster can support, because each one adds a container to the privileged spod DaemonSet. To record syscalls from running workloads and turn them into profiles, enable the recorder and the enricher:

enableBpfRecorder: true
enableLogEnricher: true

The eBPF recorder needs a kernel with BTF support, and the log enricher reads the node's audit log, so both fail on nodes that cannot provide those. Leave them off unless profile recording is the goal.

Enabling SELinux support pulls the upstream selinuxd container, which Chainguard does not publish. The other subsystems run entirely from this container.

Documentation and Resources

• Upstream installation and usage guide
• Upstream project repository
• Chainguard Containers on Chainguard Academy

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.