Linux Containers Forensics

Digital Forensics

LCF

Scheduled

Cyber Funded Research (CFR)

January 2026 December 2029

49 months

Thibault Debatty

Docker Linux

Container-based applications, powered by technologies such as Docker and orchestrated by platforms like Kubernetes, have become foundational to modern software deployment due to their efficiency, scalability, and portability.

However, these advantages come with new security challenges. Containers are not immune to security breaches - threats such as container escapes, image tampering, and misconfigured orchestration layers can compromise entire environments. Investigating such incidents is particularly complex due to the dynamic and ephemeral nature of containers, the distributed nature of orchestrated deployments, and the sheer volume of logs and artifacts generated across nodes and layers.

While several studies have explored the domain of container forensics (e.g., Alqahtany et al., 2020; Martins et al., 2021; Alharbi et al., 2022), current solutions often struggle with performance, completeness, and automation in real-world environments.

This research project aims to advance the state of container forensics by developing more efficient evidence collection and analysis techniques that are orchestration-aware, scalable, and suitable for real-time or near-real-time investigations.

  • Alqahtany, S., et al. (2020). Docker Forensics: An Analysis of Container Persistence and Data Recovery.
  • Martins, R., et al. (2021). Forensics in Container-Based Environments: Docker and Kubernetes Case Studies.
  • Alharbi, S., et al. (2022). Challenges in Kubernetes Forensics: A Survey and Future Directions.
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