Reducing False Positives: Addressing Non-Exploitable CVEs in Hardened Kubernetes Environments with Vulnerability Scanners

Introduction: Addressing False Positives in Kubernetes Vulnerability Scanning In Kubernetes environments fortified with security measures, traditional vulnerability scanners such as Trivy and Grype frequently generate false positives by flagging theoretically present but practically non-exploitable Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). These scanners operate in isolation, analyzing container images without integrating runtime security contexts, such as Kubernetes hardening configurations. For example, a container with readOnlyRootFilesystem: true and read-only volume mounts renders arbitrary file write CVEs irrelevant, yet scanners lack the contextual awareness to disregard them. This discrepancy stems from the decoupling of static analysis and runtime security , where scanners’ theoretical risk assessments fail to account for actual protections like runAsNonRoot , resource limits , or Pod Security Policies . This mismatch between static scanning and dynamic runtime conditions c