Kube Shield: A Deep Learning Framework for Misuse Detection in Kubernetes Traffic
Kubernetes architecture has become a preferred platform for managing workload applications that handle extensive customer data, including mission-critical applications within software containers and multi-tenant systems. However, the security of Kubernetes systems must be strengthened to prevent misuse and potential anomalies. This research introduces an advanced machine learning-based approach for detecting misuse in Kubernetes environments. The proposed Machine Learning (ML) framework encompasses data pre-processing, feature engineering, model training, and evaluation stages for effective anomaly detection.
The primary objectives of this study include transforming raw traffic flow data into structured features suitable for machine learning models, capturing the sequential nature of traffic flows using time-series models to understand normal and misuse behaviours, developing advanced machine learning models for classifying normal and malicious traffic flow sequences, and evaluating the performance of the proposed model against other relevant models using appropriate metrics.
To achieve these goals, the raw traffic flow data, including timestamps, traffic flow names, categories, and arguments, undergoes pre-processing and feature extraction. Time-series models, such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), are employed to identify sequential patterns and detect deviations indicative of misuse. Supervised learning algorithms like Random Forests, Support Vector Machines (SVMs), and Neural Networks are utilized to classify anomalies in traffic flow sequences. The performance of the proposed model is assessed using metrics like accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score, and AUC-ROC.
This research aims to enhance Kubernetes security by effectively detecting misuses and potential threats in real-time, thereby fortifying the overall system's resilience.