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· 9 min read
Vincent Lin

In July 2022, the KubeEdge community completed a third-party security audit of KubeEdge and released a paper on cloud native edge computing security threat analysis and protection. Based on the security threat model and audit suggestions, the community consistently strengthens the KubeEdge software supply chain. Now, we are excited to announce that KubeEdge v1.13.0 (including both binary and container image artifacts), released on January 18, 2023, achieves SLSA 3 compliance, first of its kind in the CNCF community.

Why Is SLSA 3 Compliance Important to KubeEdge​

Software supply chain integrity attacks (unauthorized modification of software packages) have been increasing in the past three years. After KubeEdge reaches SLSA 3, the E2E security (from source code build to release) is hardened, preventing malicious tampering of binary and container image artifacts. Thanks to SLSA, we can enhance the integrity of software artifacts, against tampering or any type of unauthorized modification of the software or software package, and enable software to defend against common supply chain attacks.

· 3 min read
KubeEdge SIG Release

On Jan 18, 2023, KubeEdge released v1.13. The new version introduces several enhanced features, significantly improving performance, security, and edge device management.

v1.13 What's New​

Performance Improvement​

  • CloudCore memory usage is reduced by 40%, through unified generic Informer and reduce unnecessary cache. (#4375, #4377)

  • List-watch dynamicController processing optimization, each watcher has a separate channel and goroutine processing to improve processing efficiency (#4506)

  • Added list-watch synchronization mechanism between cloud and edge and add dynamicController watch gc mechanism (#4484)

  • Removed 10s hard delay when offline nodes turn online (#4490)

  • Added prometheus monitor server and a metric connected_nodes to cloudHub. This metric tallies the number of connected nodes each cloudhub instance (#3646)

  • Added pprof for visualization and analysis of profiling data (#3646)

  • CloudCore configuration is now automatically adjusted according to nodeLimit to adapt to the number of nodes of different scales (#4376)

Security Improvement​

  • KubeEdge is proud to announce that we are digitally signing all release artifacts (including binary artifacts and container images). Signing artifacts provides end users a chance to verify the integrity of the downloaded resource. It allows to mitigate man-in-the-middle attacks directly on the client side and therefore ensures the trustfulness of the remote serving the artifacts. By doing this, we reached the SLSA security assessment level L3 (#4285)

  • Remove the token field in the edge node configuration file edgecore.yaml to eliminate the risk of edge information leakage (#4488)

Upgrade Kubernetes Dependency to v1.23.15​

Upgrade the vendered kubernetes version to v1.23.15, users are now able to use the feature of new version on the cloud and on the edge side.

Refer to the link for more details. (#4509)

Modbus Mapper based on DMI​

Modbus Device Mapper based on DMI is provided, which is used to access Modbus protocol devices and uses DMI to synchronize the management plane messages of devices with edgecore.

Refer to the link for more details. (mappers-go#79)

Support Rolling Upgrade for Edge Nodes from Cloud​

Users now able to trigger rolling upgrade for edge nodes from cloud, and specify number of concurrent upgrade nodes with nodeupgradejob.spec.concurrency. The default Concurrency value is 1, which means upgrade edge nodes one by one.

Refer to the link for more details. (#4476)

Test Runner for conformance test​

KubeEdge has provided the runner of the conformance test, which contains the scripts and related files of the conformance test.

Refer to the link for more details. (#4411)

EdgeMesh: Added configurable field TunnelLimitConfig to edge-tunnel module​

The tunnel stream of the edge-tunnel module is used to manage the data stream state of the tunnel. Users can obtain a stable and configurable tunnel stream to ensure the reliability of user application traffic forwarding.

Users can configure the cache size of tunnel stream according to TunnelLimitConfig to support larger application relay traffic.

Refer to the link for more details. (#399)

Cancel the restrictions on the relay to ensure the stability of the user's streaming application or long link application.

Refer to the link for more details. (#400)

Important Steps before Upgrading​

  • EdgeCore now uses containerd runtime by default on KubeEdge v1.13. If you want to use docker runtime, you must set edged.containerRuntime=docker and corresponding docker configuration like DockerEndpoint, RemoteRuntimeEndpoint and RemoteImageEndpoint in EdgeCore.

· 3 min read
KubeEdge SIG Release

The KubeEdge community is thrilled to announce the release of KubeEdge v1.12! This release introduces several exciting new features and enhancements, including alpha implementation of the next-generation Cloud Native Device Management Interface (DMI), a new version of the lightweight Edged engine, high-availability mode for EdgeMesh, edge node upgrades from the cloud, authorization for the Edge Kube-API endpoint, and more.

What's New in KubeEdge v1.12​

Alpha Implementation of Next-Gen Cloud Native Device Management Interface (DMI)​

DMI makes KubeEdge's IoT device management more pluggable and modular in a cloud-native way, covering Device Lifecycle Management, Device Operation, and Device Data Management.

  • Device Lifecycle Management: Simplifies IoT device lifecycle management, making it as easy as managing a pod.

  • Device Operation: Provides the ability to operate devices through the Kubernetes API.

  • Device Data Management: Separates device data management from device management, allowing data to be consumed by local applications or synchronized to the cloud through a special tunnel.

Next-Gen Edged Graduates to GA: Suitable for More Scenarios​

The new version of the lightweight Edged engine, optimized from Kubelet and integrated into EdgeCore, has graduated to General Availability (GA) in this release. The new Edged will continue to communicate with the cloud through a reliable transmission tunnel, making it suitable for a wider range of scenarios.

Introducing High-Availability Mode for EdgeMesh​

KubeEdge v1.12 introduces a high-availability mode for EdgeMesh. Unlike the previous centralized relay mode, the EdgeMesh HA mode can set up multiple relay nodes. When some relay nodes fail, other relay nodes can continue to provide relay services, avoiding single points of failure and improving system stability.

Support Edge Node Upgrade from the Cloud​

KubeEdge v1.12 introduces the NodeUpgradeJob v1alpha1 API to upgrade edge nodes from the cloud. With this API and its associated controller, users can upgrade selected edge nodes from the cloud and roll back to the original version if the upgrade fails.

Support Authorization for Edge Kube-API Endpoint​

Authorization for the Edge Kube-API Endpoint is now available in KubeEdge v1.12. Third-party plugins and applications that depend on Kubernetes APIs on edge nodes must use a bearer token to communicate with the kube-apiserver via the HTTPS server in MetaServer.

New GigE Mapper​

KubeEdge v1.12 includes a new GigE Device Mapper with a Golang implementation, which is used to access GigE Vision protocol cameras.

Important Steps Before Upgrading​

  • If you want to upgrade KubeEdge to v1.12, the configuration file in EdgeCore has been upgraded to v1alpha2. You must modify your configuration file for Edged in EdgeCore to adapt to the new Edged.

  • If you want to use authorization for the Edge Kube-API Endpoint, please enable the RequireAuthorization feature through the feature gate in both CloudCore and EdgeCore. If the RequireAuthorization feature is enabled, MetaServer will only serve HTTPS requests.

  • If you want to upgrade EdgeMesh to v1.12, you do not need to deploy the existing EdgeMesh-server, but you need to configure relayNodes.

  • If you want to run EdgeMesh v1.12 on KubeEdge v1.12 and use HTTPS requests to communicate with KubeEdge, you must set kubeAPIConfig.metaServer.security.enable=true.

KubeEdge v1.12 brings exciting new features and improvements to the edge computing ecosystem. We invite you to explore the release and provide feedback to the community. Happy edge computing!

· 13 min read
Wack Xu

Abstract​

The population of KubeEdge brings in community interests in the scalability and scale of KubeEdge. Now, Kubernetes clusters powered by KubeEdge, as fully tested, can stably support 100,000 concurrent edge nodes and manage more than one million pods. This report introduces the metrics used in the test, the test procedure, and the method to connect to an ocean of edge nodes.

· 2 min read
Vincent Lin

As the first cloud-native edge computing community, KubeEdge provides solutions for cloud-edge synergy and has been widely adopted in industries including Transportation, Energy, Internet, CDN, Manufacturing, Smart campus, etc. With the accelerated deployment of KubeEdge in this area based on cloud-edge synergy, the community will improve the security of KubeEdge continuously in cloud-native edge computing scenarios.

The KubeEdge community attaches great importance to security and has set up Sig Security and Security Team to design KubeEdge system security and quickly respond to and handle security vulnerabilities. To conduct a more comprehensive security assessment of the KubeEdge project, the KubeEdge community cooperates with Ada Logics Ltd. and The Open Source Technology Improvement Fund performed a holistic security audit of KubeEdge and output a security auditing report, including the security threat model and security issues related to the KubeEdge project. Thank you to experts Adam Korczynski and David Korczynski of Ada Logics for their professional and comprehensive evaluation of the KubeEdge project, which has important guiding significance for the security protection of the KubeEdge project. Thank you Amir Montazery and Derek Zimmer of OSTIF and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) who helped with this engagement.

The discovered security issues have been fixed and patched to the latest three minor release versions (v1.11.1, v1.10.2, v1.9.4) by KubeEdge maintainers according to the kubeedge security policy. Security advisories have been published here.

For more details of the threat model and the mitigations, Please check KubeEdge Threat Model And Security Protection Analysis: https://github.com/kubeedge/community/tree/master/sig-security/sig-security-audit/KubeEdge-threat-model-and-security-protection-analysis.md.