A Look at Running Containers in a Hostile Environment

NorthSec is one of the biggest on-location security contests (Capture The Flag) in the world. It's also one of the biggest deployments of LXC, albeit only for a weekend. It is unique not only because …

NorthSec is one of the biggest on-location security contests (Capture The Flag) in the world. It’s also one of the biggest deployments of LXC, albeit only for a weekend. It is unique not only because of its size but because of the way it works. Every team gets its own simulation of the real world, including its own fake internet and various fake companies and organizations connected to it. Each edition comes with its own original scenario which drives the event and gets the team going from one challenge to the next, earning points in the process. Everything is simulated using containers, several hundreds of them PER TEAM. Those run internet routers or simulate corporate servers. Some are deliberately vulnerable to attacks; some can’t ever fail. In this talk, we’ll look at the NorthSec 2017 infrastructure, what it looked like, how it was made and what we learned from it.