Category: Divers

My First KubeCon as a CNCF Ambassador: Atlanta 2025 Highlights

This year’s KubeCon in Atlanta brought together some of the most vibrant and forward-looking voices in the cloud-native ecosystem. Following an insightful and energetic Cloud Native Rejekts conference where the community pushed boundaries and shared unfiltered technical expertise, it was time for KubeCon, the global stage where these ideas scale, mature, and inspire real-world change.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 also marked a milestone in my personal journey. It was my first time attending as a CNCF Ambassador, and I had the privilege of contributing as a speaker not once, but twice. It was a meaningful and transformative experience, and I’m excited to share what made this edition truly exceptional. With thousands of attendees from across the globe, dozens of tracks spanning everything from platform engineering and security to storage and edge compute, and the usual surge of side-conversations and hallway meetups, the energy was palpable.

I also had the opportunity to join the Platform Engineering Coffee Meetup for the first time a valuable learning experience and a surprisingly engaging discussion to kick off the day at 7 AM (outch!).

As a contributor to Kubernetes security eco-system and an active member of the cloud-native community, I arrived with two hats: attendee and speaker (twice). This event felt like a clear reflection of how fast our ecosystem is evolving, and how cloud-native security is reshaping itself alongside platform engineering, AI, and runtime detection.

Preparing and delivering these talks was an incredible learning experience. The KubeCon audience is uniquely engaged filled with practitioners who ask thoughtful questions and share their own experiences. The conversations that continued in the hallway track after my sessions were just as valuable as the presentations themselves.

Several themes dominated the conversations at KubeCon Atlanta 2025:

AI + Kubernetes Integration

  • Kubernetes shifting from orchestration to GPU-native AI operating substrate
  • Focus on dynamic GPU partitioning (MIG, vGPU) to reduce cost
  • NUMA/topology-aware scheduling for low-latency training and inference
  • Standardized device plugins across NVIDIA, AMD ROCm, Intel
  • Autoscaling based on tokens & latency, not HTTP metrics
  • Model, dataset, and embeddings treated as signed supply-chain artifacts
  • Identity-backed access to models and GPUs leveraging SPIFFE/SPIRE

Platform Engineering for Multi-Tenant AI

  • Internal platforms must enforce GPU quotas, tenancy, and access control
  • Integration of model registries with RBAC + SPIFFE/SPIRE identities
  • Dataset lineage + provenance manifests as mandatory artifacts
  • Policy-as-code for inference filtering (prompts, outputs)
  • SLSA-based model pipelines (dataset → training → signed model → inference)
  • Golden paths now include GPU profiles, dataset hashing, autoscaling hints
  • Tenant isolation + workload identity using SPIFFE/SPIRE across pipelines

Zero Trust for AI Workloads

  • Zero trust applied to models, datasets, and GPU hardware
  • SPIFFE/SPIRE used for identity-bound GPU access + model attestation
  • Dataset poisoning considered a CI/CD security risk
  • Prompt abuse across shared tenants treated as data leakage vector
  • GPU side-channel attacks via shared memory and plugins
  • Model exfiltration prevention using signed registries + identity controls

eBPF for AI Observability & Security

  • Collection of GPU telemetry with near-zero overhead
  • Detection of anomalies in token-level latency and inference cost
  • Monitoring PCIe/NVLink/GPU bandwidth for distributed training
  • Real-time introspection into vector-heavy pipelines
  • eBPF + SPIFFE/SPIRE integration emerging for identity-aware telemetry

Core Takeaway

  • Kubernetes is evolving into a GPU-native, AI-governed platform
  • AI demands reshaping scheduling, platform engineering, and security models
  • SPIFFE/SPIRE is becoming the identity backbone of AI infrastructure
  • The future of Kubernetes is AI-native by design

Must-Watch Sessions

Looking forward to seeing everyone at future KubeCon events. The next stops are Amsterdam (Europe 2026), Mumbai (India 2026), and Yokohama (Japan 2026)!

Maxime.

What I Learned at fwd:cloudsec North America 2025

At the end of June, I had the chance to attend fwd:cloudsec North America 2025 in Denver, Colorado. For those unfamiliar, fwd:cloudsec is a community-driven, non-profit conference focused on cloud security research, offensive techniques, and defensive strategies. What makes it unique is its vendor-agnostic spirit: you won’t find flashy marketing keynotes or sales pitches here just practitioners sharing what really works (and what doesn’t) in securing the cloud.

The conference ran June 30 – July 1, with two packed days of deep technical talks, hallway discussions, and a strong community vibe. All talks are recorded and available on the official YouTube playlist

Why I Attended

As someone who spends most of my time on Kubernetes, Azure, and multi-cloud security strategy, fwd:cloudsec is one of the rare conferences that consistently delivers fresh, practical insights. My goals this year were to:

  • Learn from the latest offensive research and translate it into stronger threat models.
  • See how others are balancing platform guardrails vs. application-level controls.
  • Connect with peers facing similar large-scale challenges in runtime security, IAM complexity, and SaaS integrations.

Sessions That Shaped My Thinking

Maxime.

Kubernetes 1.34: What’s New in Security

Released on August 27, 2025 under the theme “Of Wind & Will (O’ WaW)”, Kubernetes v1.34 brings a strong security focus, reinforcing zero-trust principles, secure defaults, and identity-aware operations across the platform.

Projected ServiceAccount Tokens for Image Pulls (Beta)

– What’s new: The kubelet can now use short-lived, audience‑bound ServiceAccount tokens to authenticate with container registries, eliminating static Secrets on nodes.

– Why it matters: This significantly shrinks the attack surface by eschewing long-lived credentials, aligning registry access with workload identity rather than node-level secrets.

Scoped Anonymous Access for API Endpoints

– What’s new: Administrators can now safely expose health endpoints (/healthz, /readyz, /livez) to unauthenticated access, while denying broader anonymous access via narrow configuration in AuthenticationConfiguration.

– Why it matters: Prevents accidental overexposure of API capabilities, balancing observability/open health checks with tightened security controls.

Pod Identity & mTLS with PodCertificateRequests (Stable)

– What’s new: Pods can now obtain X.509 certificates via PodCertificateRequests, allowing kubelet-managed issuance for use in mTLS authentication.

– Why it matters: Embeds strong, workload-specific identity into the platform, reinforcing secure communication patterns among services.

Field or Label-Aware RBAC (Enhanced Least Privilege)

– What’s new: Although not yet GA, emerging enhancements allow RBAC rules that consider node or pod-specific attributes (fields or labels) to enforce least-privilege access.

– Why it matters: Granular permissions reduce risk from overbroad role bindings, tightening control over what pods or nodes can access and do.

CEL Mutation Policies & External JWT Signing

– CEL Mutation Policies: Introduce native support for rule-based mutation using Common Expression Language (CEL), enabling secure, declarative policy enforcement within Kubernetes.

– External JWT Signing: Facilitates signing JWTs via external key management services, removing local key storage and enhancing auditability and security.

Mutual TLS (mTLS) for Pod-to-API Traffic

– What’s new: Kubernetes is ramping up mTLS support to secure pod-to-API server communications, though details are still unfolding.

– Why it matters: Ensures encrypted, authenticated channeling between workloads and the control plane, a key zero-trust tenet.

OCI Artifact Volumes & Image Pull Security

– What’s new: Ability to mount OCI images directly as volumes, ensuring secure, versioned delivery of external files to pods.

– Why it matters: Reduces reliance on sidecars or manual injection methods, streamlining configuration while preserving integrity.

Conclusion

Kubernetes v1.34 represents a meaningful step forward in embedding robust security into the platform itself. From per-pod identity to safer defaults, explicit anonymous access handling, and fine-grained policy enforcement, it advances Kubernetes toward a more zero-trust architecture.

Organizations should explore upgrading thoughtfully, especially leveraging the projected ServiceAccount tokens, pod-level certification, and scoped anonymous access to immediately elevate cluster security.

Maxime.