intermediate~4h

Container Security: Non-Root, Secrets, Image Scanning & Distroless

Container security is layered defense-in-depth: who the process runs as inside the container (non-root), how secrets reach the container without being baked into the image or visible in plain env vars

Learning objectives

  • Explain why a container running as root is a real security risk, even though the container is namespace-isolated from the host.
  • Explain the difference between a secret baked into an image and a secret injected at runtime, and why that difference matters.
  • Explain what a distroless image removes, and why that specifically shrinks a container's attack surface.

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Container Security: Non-Root, Secrets, Image Scanning & Distroless

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