Automatic Detection of Security Deficiencies and Refactoring Advises for Microservices
2023 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 12 credits / 18 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
The microservice architecture enables organizationsto shorten development cycles and deliver cloud-native applicationsrapidly. However, it also brings security concerns thatneed to be addressed by developers. Therefore, security testingin microservices becomes even more critical. Recent researchpapers indicate that security testing of microservices is oftenneglected for reasons such as lack of time, lack of experience inthe security domain, and absence of automated test environments.Even though several security scanning tools exist to detectcontainer, containerized workload management (Kubernetes),and network issues, none individually is sufficient to cover allsecurity problems in microservices. Using multiple scanning toolsincreases the complexity of analyzing findings and mitigatingsecurity vulnerabilities. This paper presents a fully automatedtest tool suite that can help developers address security issuesin microservices and resolve them. It targets to reduce timeand effort in security activities by encapsulating open-sourcescanning tools into one suite and providing improved feedback.The developed security scanning suite is named Pomegranate.To develop Pomegranate, we employed Design Science andconducted our investigation in Ericsson. We have evaluated ourtool using a static approach. The evaluation results indicate thatthe Pomegranate could be helpful to developers by providingsimplified and classified outputs for security vulnerabilities inmicroservices. More than half of the practitioners who give usfeedback found Pomegranate helpful in detecting and mitigatingsecurity problems in microservices. We conclude that a fullyautomated test tool suite can help developers to address mostsecurity issues in microservices. Based on the findings in thispaper, the direction for future work is to conduct a dynamicvalidation of Pomegranate in a live project.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 55
Keywords [en]
Microservices, Security, Kubernetes, Security Scanning Tools
National Category
Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-24398OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-24398DiVA, id: diva2:1746562
External cooperation
Ericsson AB
Subject / course
PA2584 Research Methods and Master's Thesis in Software Engineering for Professionals
Educational program
PAASA Master's Programme in Software Engineering 60,0 hp
Supervisors
Examiners
2023-03-292023-03-282023-03-29Bibliographically approved