Exploring Container Security Tools

Docker images bundle an application with all of its dependencies—typically OS-level packages and language-specific libraries (like Python via PIP or Node.js via NPM). The application itself may be a binary or a set of scripts executed by the OS.

A container security tool can be used to analyze the dependencies of a container image, and detect any known vulnerabilities in them. This is usually done by comparing the list of installed packages with a database of known vulnerabilities. The database is usually maintained by the tool vendor, and is updated regularly.

In this chapter, we will explore some of the most popular container security tools, and see how they can be used to analyze container images.