To Docker or not to Docker: a security perspective

The need for always shorter development cycles, continuous delivery and cost savings in cloud based infrastructures, led to the rise of containers, that provide much more flexibility than virtual machines and near-native performance. Among all container solutions, Docker is currently leading the market. In particular, Docker is a complete packaging and software delivery tool. In this work, we first provide a comprehensive view on containers ecosystem; later, we discuss through realistic use-cases the security implications of Docker environment. Further, we define an adversary model, point out several vulnerabilities affecting current usages of Docker, and finally we discuss further research directions.