A big thing is that this also happens on your dev machine with "docker run".
(Unless you know to use -p 127.0.0.1:1234:1234 instead of just -p 1234:1234 like all the examples on the web tell you.)
A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
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Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#82This (Docker opening a hole in my firewall) is why I moved my dev server from Linode to Digital Ocean. DO provides a “cloud firewall” that provides something akin to AWS security groups and therefore can’t be messed by Docker. Linode doesn’t have anything like that (last time I checked at least).
I recently started hosting something on Linode, thanks for calling this feature out. It looks like they started launching Cloud Firewalls back in November. Full rollout was maybe April?
https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/cloud-firewall-beta-open/
Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#83Crap like this is why I dont run docker. I'm glad RedHat took a principled stance on it and dropped it. Podman doesn't punch holes you didn't ask for in your firewall. What a ludicrous anti-feature.
That might be true, but regardless of docker (or other, similar solutions), shouldn't MongoDB have had auth protection?
MySQL/MariaDB have a completely open root account too... although default firewall rules should prevent public access too, unless Docker likes to punch that hole open too.
Yes, root account password and access permissions should be changed upon a fresh install, but the real issue here is Docker's "helpfulness" by opening ports without explicit permission. That's absurd, and has no reasonable excuse.
Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#84The biggest issue with docker is the false sense of security it seems to give a lot of engineers into thinking they know infra when they really don't. I stay away from this because I don't understand it fundamentally, and now this proves it's better to not think these new technologies are your friend unless you actually know what you're doing (which apparently most don't).
Staying away from it is still not the best strategy - at least learn and play with it to understand its strengths and weaknesses. > it seems to give a lot of engineers into thinking they know infra when they really don't Maybe, but technology changes over time - I don’t see many new projects choosing VMware over docker/OCI for new infrastructure deployment since you usually don’t need a full VM for applocations that…
I suppose my premise is that engineers often delude themselves into thinking that they know it well enough to implement docker when they dont. Id much rather prefer that the regular developers focus on the coding and leave those decisions to actual devops folks who can focus on getting this stuff right. But the simplicity of dockerfile lulls many into thinking if they run something with it it's production ready.
Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#85The biggest issue with docker is the false sense of security it seems to give a lot of engineers into thinking they know infra when they really don't. I stay away from this because I don't understand it fundamentally, and now this proves it's better to not think these new technologies are your friend unless you actually know what you're doing (which apparently most don't).
Staying away from it is still not the best strategy - at least learn and play with it to understand its strengths and weaknesses. > it seems to give a lot of engineers into thinking they know infra when they really don't Maybe, but technology changes over time - I don’t see many new projects choosing VMware over docker/OCI for new infrastructure deployment since you usually don’t need a full VM for applocations that…
> Staying away from it is still not the best strategy
There's a whole generation of sysadmins that use docker so that they can stay away from foundational knowledge. We interview experienced devops who do not know/understand how to build basic packages from source (e.g. they don't understand the ./configure, make, make install chain) and who only have basic knowledge of the underlying operating system.
Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#86> If a rogue database user starts deleting stories, it would get noticed a whole lot faster than a database being dropped all at once.
This feels like an odd statement. Surely a database being dropped all at once is about the loudest possible thing that could happen to a database-reliant application?
Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#87Wait... people run their databases on public IPs?
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Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#88What surprises me most is the machine running Docker was 100% connected directly to a public network interface. That’s the real root of the problem here.
Ambiguous addresses are generally a pretty big headache and have a lot of security downsides, network level firewalls are better and would have worked here too. It's literally the old NAT vs firewall case.
Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#89There's not much distance between current Docker behaviour and it calling a AWS/GCP/whatever API to route traffic to it. I predict some piece of sw, if not Docker, will be caught doing that in the near future.
Re: A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database
#90The biggest issue with docker is the false sense of security it seems to give a lot of engineers into thinking they know infra when they really don't. I stay away from this because I don't understand it fundamentally, and now this proves it's better to not think these new technologies are your friend unless you actually know what you're doing (which apparently most don't).
I'd argue an equally big problem here is this setting is that engineers have been taught to think in a perimeter security mindset.