Automate Kubernetes Image Vulnerability Scanning

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Cloud
Security

Automate Kubernetes Image Vulnerability Scanning

Container image vulnerabilities can be a major attack vector for your Kubernetes infrastructure. In this lab, you will implement automated image scanning to ensure that severely vulnerable images do not run in your cluster.

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Lab Info

Level

Advanced

Last updated

Sep 21, 2025

Duration

30m

Challenge

Configure the Admission Controller
You will find a skeleton admission control configuration at /etc/kubernetes/admission-control/admission-control.conf. Configure the admission controller by adding the necessary configuration to this file.

When configuring the admission controller:
- The kubeconfig is located at /etc/kubernetes/admission-control/imagepolicy_backend.kubeconfig.
- Configure the admission controller to deny workload creation by default, even if the backend webhook cannot be reached.
Challenge

Edit the Admission Controller's kubeconfig to Point to the Backend Webhook

Modify the admission controller's kubeconfig to point to the backend service.

The kubeconfig is located at /etc/kubernetes/admission-control/imagepolicy_backend.kubeconfig.

The backend service can be reached at acg.trivy.k8s.webhook:8090/scan.

Certificates are already set up in the kubeconfig, and the API server is already set up to be able to locate these certificate files.
Challenge

Enable Any Necessary Admission Control Plugins

Configure the API server to enable any necessary admission control plugins.

Once this is done, the API server should be using the backend webhook to scan images and deny workloads that have major vulnerabilities.

You can find Pod manifest files in /home/cloud_user you can use to test your setup. The Pod defined in good-pod.yml should succeed, while the Pod in bad-pod.yml should fail to be created due to image vulnerabilities.

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