Speaker
Description
AI has had an interesting side effect: it has shifted security from something often treated as an afterthought into a proactive, first-class concern in modern software development. With LLMs, scanning and identifying attack vectors is no longer limited to the codebase; it now extends across transitive dependencies, third-party packages, and entire distributions, resulting in a steady stream of newly uncovered critical CVEs.
Containers sit at the core of modern service deployments. Securing them is critical, and one of the most effective ways to strengthen security is to reduce the attack surface by stripping away everything that isn't essential.
The challenge is doing that in a reliable, efficient and repeatable way.
Luckily, there's a tool built for exactly this: Rocks.
It's an OCI-compliant image builder that lets you chisel away unnecessary packages and dependencies, helping you sculpt a lean, purpose-built container image, much like Michelangelo revealing a masterpiece from a block of "rock".
(pun intended)
Summary
LLMs have made it easier to identify exploitable combinations across services, dependencies, and distributions, increasing the need to ship only what’s necessary to reduce the attack surface. Rocks, an OCI image builder, helps you chisel away unnecessary packages to create lean, secure OCI images.
Biography
Tushar Gupta is a Prof 1 at Canonical, where he works on the Launchpad team, building the infrastructure that powers Ubuntu. Passionate about open-source, he loves to spend time on OSS projects and has worked on p5py (Processing for Python), Flagsmith (feature flag management), and Sarthi (Docker-based preview environments). He is also an alumnus of the MLH Fellowship, Processing Summer Fellowship, and the GitHub Campus Experts program.
Things to know or prepare for this session
Its a begineer focussed talk, but it might be good to get some familarity with OCI containers and building OCI compatible images.
What audience can learn
OCI containers, Rocks, Chiselling, Best Security Practices
| Difficulty level | Begineer |
|---|---|
| Language | English |