Open-source alternatives to Docker Bench Security

CDK is a specialized toolset for container security auditing, container escape exploitation, and cloud infrastructure pentesting. It provides a collection of scripts and tools designed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in container runtimes to break out of isolated environments and execute commands on the underlying host operating system. The project features a dedicated Docker runtime exploit suite for abusing the Docker API, procfs, and cgroups to gain unauthorized host-level access. It includes specific techniques for bypassing isolation via LXCFS, user namespace exploitation, and ho

Grype is a command-line security scanner designed to identify known vulnerabilities within container images, filesystems, and software manifests. It functions as a software composition analysis tool that detects security flaws in application components and open-source libraries to support supply chain security. The tool distinguishes itself by reconstructing the final state of container images through layered filesystem inspection and normalizing diverse package formats into a unified dependency graph. It maintains a local cache of security advisories synchronized from multiple upstream sourc

kube-bench is a Kubernetes security benchmark scanner and configuration auditor. It verifies if a cluster adheres to the Center for Internet Security standards and other hardening guides to identify security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. The tool operates as a containerized security scanner, utilizing host namespaces to analyze nodes and control plane components without requiring the installation of binaries directly on the host. It supports multiple Kubernetes distributions, applying environment-specific benchmarks to ensure auditing accuracy for managed services. The project cover

ThreatMapper is a cloud native application protection platform and infrastructure security scanner. It functions as a vulnerability management system and cloud workload telemetry collector designed to monitor workloads and detect security risks across cloud and container environments. The platform distinguishes itself through a network traffic visualizer that uses machine learning to classify communication patterns and a graph-based attack mapping system to identify high-risk paths between vulnerabilities and network dependencies. Its broader capabilities cover cloud infrastructure complianc

Clair is a container vulnerability scanner that performs static analysis of container images to identify known security vulnerabilities. It functions as an analyzer for OCI and Docker images, indexing their contents to detect security risks and outdated packages without requiring the containers to be running. The tool identifies vulnerabilities by matching indexed container components against security databases to find common vulnerabilities and exposures. This process involves analyzing filesystem layers to track the provenance and versioning of packages across the image hierarchy. The proj

This project is a comprehensive Linux server hardening guide and infrastructure documentation resource. It provides a set of validated security baselines and step-by-step instructions for implementing security controls and configuration best practices to protect production environments. The guide focuses on aligning systems with industry-standard security benchmarks, specifically those provided by the Center for Internet Security and Security Technical Implementation Guides. It includes a framework for using OpenSCAP to scan system configurations, verify compliance against reference profiles,

Prowler is a multi-cloud security scanner and security posture management tool. It automates security and compliance assessments across multiple cloud environments to identify misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. The project provides a multi-cloud security analysis engine that operates as an automated auditor, evaluating infrastructure against industry-standard regulatory frameworks and security benchmarks. It features a cloud security visualization dashboard that uses a graph database to map cloud inventory and visualize potential attack paths. Capabilities include automated cloud infrast

This project is a secure container runtime that provides strong isolation for application workloads by implementing a userspace kernel. By intercepting system calls and executing them within a memory-safe, restricted environment, it minimizes the attack surface exposed to the host kernel. It functions as a drop-in engine for standard container orchestration platforms, ensuring compatibility with industry-standard runtime specifications while maintaining a hardened execution boundary. The runtime distinguishes itself through its ability to virtualize core system resources, including an indepen

Dive is a command-line tool designed for the analysis and optimization of container images. It functions as a layered storage inspector, allowing users to decompose image manifests to examine individual filesystem layers and identify opportunities to reduce total image size. The tool features a filesystem diffing engine that calculates net changes between sequential layers to highlight redundant data and storage inefficiencies. Users interact with this data through a terminal-based dashboard that provides keyboard-driven navigation of complex file structures and layer metadata. By abstracting

Checkov is a static analysis tool and security scanner designed to identify misconfigurations in infrastructure as code, container images, and Kubernetes configurations. It functions as a cloud security posture tool, an SCA vulnerability scanner, and a secret scanning utility to prevent security breaches and version control leaks. The project distinguishes itself through deep graph analysis and variable resolution, allowing it to map relationships between interconnected resources and evaluate the final state of infrastructure attributes. It provides extensibility for defining custom security

This project is a terminal-based dashboard for managing Kubernetes clusters. It provides a character-based interface that enables real-time monitoring and interactive control of containerized workloads, allowing users to perform administrative tasks such as scaling deployments, viewing logs, and managing port forwarding directly from the command line. The interface is designed for high-speed navigation, utilizing a keyboard-driven command system that maps input sequences to specific operational actions. It maintains an accurate view of the cluster state through asynchronous event polling, ens

Cosign is a tool for signing and verifying software artifacts, primarily those stored in OCI-compatible registries such as container images, Helm charts, SBOMs, and Tekton bundles. It supports keyless signing using ephemeral keys and short-lived certificates from the Sigstore public-good infrastructure, associating signatures with an OpenID Connect identity rather than a long-lived cryptographic key. The project provides multiple signing and verification methods, including private keys, key pairs stored in KMS providers like AWS KMS and Azure Key Vault, and hardware security keys. It can sign

Kube-hunter is a security scanner and vulnerability hunter for Kubernetes clusters. It operates as a cloud-native penetration tool designed to identify security weaknesses, infrastructure misconfigurations, and exploitable gaps by simulating attacker techniques. The tool distinguishes itself through a dual-mode scanning engine that executes both remote external probes and internal network scans. It features identity-based impersonation, allowing it to use service account tokens and pod identities to simulate security access from specific cluster roles and determine the potential blast radius

a tool to perform static analysis of known vulnerabilities, trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats in docker images/containers and to monitor the docker daemon and running docker containers for detecting anomalous activities

This project is a Docker educational resource and a collection of practical examples designed for learning containerization technologies. It serves as a guide for understanding container fundamentals, including the creation and management of custom images and the use of registries. The repository provides specialized references for container security hardening, such as managing kernel privileges and implementing supply chain security. It also includes tutorials for multi-container orchestration and a DevOps guide focused on CI/CD automation and image optimization. The material covers a broad

This project is a comprehensive collection of tutorials and guided laboratories designed to teach containerization, networking, and security using Docker. It serves as a learning path for building portable images and executing isolated processes. The materials provide specific guides for managing container clusters and scaling services through Docker Swarm and overlay networks. It includes a security handbook for implementing image scanning and secret management, as well as laboratories dedicated to modernizing legacy applications by wrapping older software installers into containers. The co

Hadolint is a static analysis tool designed to validate container build configurations. It functions as a security scanner and configuration auditor, parsing build instructions into a structured format to identify deviations from security and efficiency standards. The tool distinguishes itself by performing deep inspection of embedded shell commands. By tokenizing and analyzing these scripts, it detects common scripting errors and security vulnerabilities that might otherwise persist within a container image. It integrates external analysis tools to provide specialized validation for these in

Datree is a policy enforcement framework for Kubernetes that validates configurations against rules written in Rego, JSON Schema, or CEL. It operates as both a command-line tool for pre-deployment scanning and as a cluster-side admission webhook for real-time enforcement, integrating with CI/CD pipelines and continuous delivery tools like ArgoCD and FluxCD. The framework supports namespace-scoped policy mapping, allowing different policies to apply to different namespaces, and provides a skip annotation mechanism for selectively bypassing rules on individual resources or entire namespaces. It

Syft is a software bill of materials generator, container image scanner, and software dependency catalog. It analyzes container images and filesystems to produce comprehensive inventories of installed packages and dependencies in standard formats. Additionally, it serves as a software attestation tool and an SBOM format converter. The project distinguishes itself through the ability to create cryptographically signed attestations for software inventories to ensure provenance and integrity. It also provides the capability to transform software bills of materials between different industry sche

LXC is an OS-level virtualization framework and Linux container manager used to run multiple isolated Linux systems on a single host. It functions as a kernel namespace orchestrator and unprivileged container runtime, allowing for the creation and management of system containers without the overhead of a hypervisor. The project provides unprivileged container execution by mapping container root users to unprivileged host users to prevent host system access. It ensures security through system call filtering and root user isolation, enabling containers to run without requiring host root privile

This project is a comprehensive, community-driven directory that serves as a centralized discovery hub for the container ecosystem. It functions as a structured knowledge base, aggregating a wide array of software tools, educational materials, and technical resources designed to assist developers and operators in mastering containerization technologies. The repository distinguishes itself through a meticulously organized taxonomy that maps the entire container lifecycle, from initial development and image building to orchestration, security, and infrastructure operations. By curating disparat

Harbor is a self-hosted, enterprise-grade container registry platform designed to store, sign, and scan container images and cloud-native artifacts. It provides a centralized repository that integrates directly with Kubernetes environments to manage the full lifecycle of software artifacts, from initial storage to production deployment. The platform distinguishes itself through a focus on security, governance, and multi-site availability. It features a pluggable vulnerability scanning framework that allows for the integration of various security engines, alongside content trust mechanisms tha

Slim is a comprehensive suite for container lifecycle management, providing tools for image inspection, optimization, security hardening, and service troubleshooting. It functions as a platform for analyzing containerized applications through both static metadata review and dynamic behavioral probing, enabling users to understand image composition and runtime dependencies. The project distinguishes itself by automating the creation of minimal, production-ready container images. It achieves this by removing unnecessary files and components, flattening image layers, and synthesizing restrictive

OpenShift Origin is a Kubernetes distribution platform that extends Kubernetes with integrated security, multi-tenancy, and application lifecycle management for enterprise container orchestration. It functions as a multi-tenant container orchestrator that enforces per-project security policies, resource quotas, and SELinux isolation for shared cluster environments. The platform includes a Source-to-Image builder that creates container images directly from application source code using Dockerfiles or buildpacks without external build servers, and an Operator Lifecycle Manager that installs and

Vault is a centralized secrets management platform designed to secure, store, and control access to sensitive credentials such as API keys, passwords, certificates, and encryption keys. At its core, the system employs a barrier-based cryptographic sealing mechanism that requires an unseal process to decrypt internal storage, ensuring that sensitive data remains protected. It provides identity-based access control to manage granular permissions across distributed infrastructure, effectively centralizing security policies and authentication for both human and machine workloads. What distinguish

etcd is a distributed, strongly consistent key-value store designed to provide reliable storage for critical system metadata and coordination primitives. It functions as a distributed consensus engine, utilizing a replicated log and leader-based state machine to ensure that all nodes in a cluster maintain a synchronized view of data. By providing atomic operations and linearizable reads and writes, it serves as a foundational component for distributed systems requiring high availability and fault tolerance. The system distinguishes itself through its multi-version concurrency control, which e