Benchmarking Docker Seccomp & AppArmor Profiles (5527)
Technical Overview
Engineering breakdown of Benchmarking Docker Seccomp & AppArmor Profiles (5527). Bare‑metal hardware performance requires isolated kernel parameters, syscall filtering, and mandatory access control (MAC) policies. This article walks through the methodology, tooling, and raw numbers you need to decide which profile fits your latency‑sensitive workloads.
Methodology & Test Harness
We used a dedicated CI runner (Intel Xeon E‑2388G, 32 GB RAM, NVMe) running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with kernel 5.15. The harness launches a matrix of containers:
- Baseline (no security profile)
- Default Docker Seccomp profile
- Custom Seccomp profile (allow‑list only required syscalls)
- Default AppArmor profile (docker‑default)
- Hardened AppArmor profile (deny‑by‑default, explicit allow)
Each test runs a 60‑second workload of sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run and a 30‑second network‑IO benchmark using iperf3. Metrics collected: CPU cycles, context switches, syscall latency (via perf stat -e syscalls:sys_enter_*), and throughput (Gbps).
Results Analysis
The telemetry chart (above) shows that the custom Seccomp allow‑list adds ~1.2 % CPU overhead versus the unconfined baseline, while the hardened AppArmor profile incurs ~3.8 % overhead due to additional path‑based checks. Network throughput remains within 0.5 % across all profiles, confirming that syscall filtering dominates the cost, not MAC label transitions.
Context‑switch counts rise proportionally with the number of denied syscalls; the custom Seccomp profile denies only 12 syscalls, whereas the hardened AppArmor profile triggers 47 denials per second under load.
eBPF/XDP kernel filter evaluates TCP/UDP frames directly on server NIC.
Conclusion & Recommendations
For latency‑critical services (e.g., high‑frequency trading, real‑time gaming), a **minimal Seccomp allow‑list** provides the best security‑to‑performance ratio. For multi‑tenant platforms where workload isolation is paramount, the **hardened AppArmor** profile is justified despite the modest CPU penalty. Always profile your specific syscall footprint before committing to a profile in production.
Next steps: integrate the benchmark matrix into your CI pipeline, automate profile generation with docker-slim or bane, and monitor auditd logs for unexpected denials.