Hello everybody. Hi, I'm Catherine Dolan. I'm the convener of the MA in Global Futures and Sustainability. And today I'm going to provide you with a short introduction to the Anthropology of Sustainability. I'm going to begin by sharing my slides here so that you can see where I'm going. I hope everybody can see them, if not send Rachel a note in the chat. Okay, so what I want to do here today is just provide you with a little taster lecture from the Anthropology of Sustainability module that I convene in the program. And I just want to say if you have any questions at all, please do feel free to ask them at the end of our session or to email me at any time. All right, so let me start by saying that, you know, today our planet contains 7.9 billion people with billions more likely to be added to our population by the end of this century. And we're also amidst this great number of people were a world that's divided between the very wealthy and the very poor, and we face unprecedented environmental challenges. And secondly, as many of you know changing the climate, what species survive on our planet climate, the chemistry of the ocean, the safety of the air, and the access and ability of fresh water for us to drink extreme storms typhoons floods droughts forest fires have become the new normal in our world. And the democratic systems through which we purport to solve our dependence on fossil fuels are themselves premised on fossil fuel dependency. Now, these changes are so profound that geologists have given our current geological era a new name, the Anthropocene to denote the role that human beings are playing or have played in changing the fossil and rock layers of the earth. Humans are not the only species that actually alter their environments, others do too. So you can see here beavers build dams affecting the hydrology of the area surrounding them. Birds build nests and coyotes dig dens, altering their environments in ways that increase their survival or the reproduction of the species as a whole their reproductive success. Now, this is this ability to alter the environment to facilitate the survival of the species is termed niche construction, or what the anthropologist and a thing called species agilities. Now as humans, we excel in niche construction we've done clothing to allow us to live in very cold conditions the same with insulated housing. We've constructed aqueducts, irrigation systems, wells and urban water supply pipes to provide the water that we need to survive, replacing drinking from streams or lakes. We have agriculture and refrigeration and transportation networks that allow us to eat all year round fresh fruits and vegetables. We have health measures such as antibiotics and vaccines that limit the impact of disease as we've seen. So really human niche construction is an amazing thing, but human niche construction also takes a phenomenal amount of energy. Again as most of you know is primarily consisting of fossil fuels. And these fossil fuels alter the global carbon cycle, leading to a buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that cause local as well as global climate change. So one of the examples of this is the way in which we've changed land use. For example, moving from small farms to large farms, from forests to parking lots, all contributing to an increase in the emission of greenhouse gases. Now land use change is a major driver of population extinction. In tropical areas alone, it was estimated that 1,800 species were lost each hour in the 1990s. And according to Colbert, who has done the work that you see here on the sixth mass extinction, he feels that we are headed for what he calls this sixth mass extinction and increase in the rate of species loss on a scale that's only occurred five times in the entire history of the earth. Now, while homo sapiens are excellent in niche construction, it certainly has clear consequences for the climate for species diversity, and for the landscapes we inhabit. Most of these consequences result from the growth based market economies of the global north, North America, Europe, as well as East Asia, that have intensified their resource extraction and consumption and externalize the costs of this on to the species and environments of the global south. And these economies of the global north, really as well as many other places, but largely the global north are based on two logics that anthropologists and sociologists have come to challenge. And the first is this logic of infinite growth. And this is the way in which we take the idea of growth to be a natural, a given an unquestioned and inevitable process. Now this is a very powerful discourse. It's also an evolutionary one, because it's based on the premise that through enhanced technological development, you know, less developed economies will grow into middle income economies which will grow into highly developed economies or high income economies. So countries are placed on this sort of hierarchical scale, as if one will become the, then the other the next on the ladder as a matter of default right through through this process of human progress and development. So this is one logic that many are challenging today. You know we've seen it, for example, in the D growth movement, the way in which the idea of infinite growth is being problematized as one of the kind of key challenges and constraints we face to addressing climate change and its consequences. The second piece of the second logic here is this idea of the separation of humankind from nature. Now, while the idea of that humans are separate from the natural world has is kind of widely accepted. This is really a construction in other words it's a product of history of junior Christian ideas where man was created separately from the natural world and had dominion over it. Now this belief this conviction is really this ideology has calcified over time. For example, in the birth of the scientific method by Francis Bacon during the Renaissance period, as well as an Adam Smith's theory of capitalism, where nature was, you know valued solely because of its ability to satisfy human nature. This is in contrast to many indigenous cultures around the world where there's a familial relationship with nature where nature is considered part and parcel of a society of humans and the natural world working together plants and animals are actually these two narratives of limitless growth and the separation of man and nature are powerful. They've allowed Western economies to destroy the non human world for a very long time. And they're premised on this idea of capitalism that sees the non human world as resources that can be exploited for the human project. How else could we justify our food system for example, if we didn't see cows and pigs as less than us, if we didn't see a division between the value we place on human life and the value we place on all other kinds of lives. If for example, you were a believer in reincarnation, and you followed an Eastern religion, one of the Eastern religions, you know, you or someone you love could one day be a cow. And this creates a very different understanding of food than if you see animals as very distinct from yourself. The understanding of sustainability rests on these assumptions these idea lot of these dip these ideologies. For example, the, the term sustainability was first articulated or used by this guy, Carl Hans Carl von Carl with who managed the mining on behalf of the Saxon court in Friedberg Germany in the early 1700s. And while there were forest regulations at that time, the impact of timber shortages on Saxony silver mining and metallurgy industries was devastating. And Carlowitz actually criticized the short term thinking and remember this was the 1700s. That was allowing more and more of the woodland in the area to be converted into fields and meadows and he argued that would should only be cut if they could be regrown through planned reforestation projects, very much ahead of this time. So this became an important guiding principle of what we know as forestry today. Later in the 19th and 20th centuries we see how sustainability became twinned with conservation. As the dominant approach to managing resources and the natural environment was one of protection to protect them protect, for example, areas of forest and nature from capitalism excesses. But this bifurcation is separation between human beings and the natural world also is reflected in the international institutions that have adopted sustainability as a platform. For example, it was only in the 1970s when we saw environmental sustainability come on into the development arena for the first time as a concept that the UN conference on environment on human environment, excuse me. So here we see also the first separation between the environment the economy and develop and the society within the international development platform. You know and this is continued through various iterations of international declarations international conventions international programs of work. And as even in the 1992 UN conference on environmental environment and development they put forth the agenda 21, which acknowledge that sustainable development required attention to social economic and societal goals. This is also a recognition that's found in the in the 2015 sustainability sustainable development goals excuse me, which focus on economic development, social equity and environmental protection. I think of this as a good thing because at least they're not ignoring the environment at least they're not ignoring the economy at least they're taking into account issues around inequality and social justice and social development. Human Rights Council just noted in their resolution passed in November 2021, right around the time of cop that there's a wreck while there's now been a recognition of the holistic and indivisible nature of human rights and the environment. I think we now see that we can't separate these two things out. These, it doesn't actually. It goes unheeded in global regional and national environmental and climate policy forums, in other words, we're still prioritizing one of these fears, instead of the other. And then there's been very little acknowledgement of how these three spheres interpreting interpenetrate and are mutually implicated. So for example, even the SDGs the sustainable development goals, illustrate how achieving one aspect of the three dimensions can undermine the achievement of the other because you're not thinking in them as intertwined. The goal of eliminating poverty, for example, is intention with the dominant approaches towards protecting territorial ecosystems, hitting conservation against economic development. So anthropologists often challenge these assumptions as sort of taken for granted ideas that are embedded in terms like sustainability, even development or progress or growth and calling attention to the multiple meanings that can be embedded in a particular concept. So the concept of sustainability has been called an empty signifier, that is, that is subject to radical different interpretations and uses, depending on who's actually using the term so we see a sustainable sustainable resources, sustainable cities, sustainable agriculture and so forth. It encompasses the movement towards smart and sustainable cities, the trend toward market environmentalism, and the pursuit of sustainable food practices from community gardens to community supported agriculture to food that is local slow food organic and fairly traded. And it's deployed by a range of different actors right including social enterprises NGOs corporations municipal governments international development organizations multilateral organizations nation states. And it even brings traditional antagonists together under the premise that they're all working towards the same goal of sustainability. Now this conceptual fuzziness anthropologists have shown is actually productive because it's the ambiguity of sustainability that allows it to be deployed unproblematically from the biggest of fossil fuel corporations, to the greenest of NGOs, often allowing the status quo to be reproduced while giving token attention to environmental and social issues. So one of the roles of anthropology is to question the narratives and the categories that define our worlds. So let me just finish this brief introduction by highlighting how anthropologists are conceptualizing and challenging ideas around climate change in arguing for a transition to a more sustainable world. First of all, we're trying to challenge the ideology of growth and progress that I spoke about. Now this is difficult because we've all been taught in various ways to aspire to grow to progress to do better and better. It's not only an individual but a national and planetary narrative. But there's nothing inevitable about an economy premised on the idea of infinite growth. Some scholars and activists as I mentioned are advocating an alternative trajectory of D growth, which rejects these assumptions of mainstream economic thinking and sees seeks rather the shrinking of production and consumption as necessary for a democratic just and sustainable future. And certainly right now, there's all the more reason to challenge this idea of growth as we find ourselves in a hydrocarbon war, where, you know, we now have a moment, given the illumination that's been played on our addiction to hydrocarbons to reconsider are the way in which we grow our economy, perhaps on a different footing of non fossil fuels. Secondly, anthropologists call for examining how resources are distributed scarcities are not only generated through absolute limits right no more food, but through the unequal access to resources across populations of race, class, gender, ethnicity, geographic location. So disadvantaged groups often suffer disproportionately from any issue of climate change, experiencing what's called a double inequality. And in fact the term the Anthropocene mass the fact that not all human beings have the same impacts on earth, Amazonian Indians, Indians or Congolese hunter gatherers for example, have very different ecological impacts than we do here in Britain. Thirdly, we need to shift from this idea of value to values. Since industrialization, the value of nature has been equated solely with its value to people as humans extend control over species and the material world. So value means that landscapes and species are increasingly seen as natural capital, valued in financial terms and exchanged in global markets. So we need to move away from solely this capitalist idea of value to a way to thinking about the way that value connotes social justice equality and the common good. Fourth, we need to think beyond capitalism. We've come to know capitalism as an economic and cultural system that continually spreads and bends societies to their own needs. Whether we're studying ecological disasters pandemics conflict and violence capitalism is often seen to be the root of the problem. Because capitalism assumes such a determinant force, the only alternatives that we can envision are those possible, given the realities of the class, the capitalist system, but anthropologists have shown the way in which people engage in non capitalist activities, economic activities such as gifting and bartering and exchanging beyond markets, producing cooperatively distributing collectively and democratically interacting with one another and the natural world in ways that are not based on individual resource maximizing self interest. Finally, the. It's important that we think about supporting diversity. What we're seeing are the development of monocultures uniformity homogenization in our world. We should be thinking about what our true our Eskibar calls plural versus struggles against capitalist accumulation such as those put forth by indigenous groups peasants and landless movements. So instead of an idea of a global world in which we're all trying to fit into the same idea of progress and development together, we would want we want to see difference we want to see how the struggles of the zapatista's in Mexico can help us understand strategies for addressing climate change and and the destruction of the earth. And finally, it's important for us here at so as to ensure that we're not just studying these issues but that we're actually contributing to the solutions and to the the way in which they're addressed in both policy circles as well as among wider publics anthropologists. We believe, get out of the classroom and think about the impact of their work on the wider publics and wider world. So I'll just finish with this one slide because I think it says, it kind of encapsulates what we hope to achieve through the MA and global futures. It's by Henry at a more of the UCL's global solidarity unit in conceiving of a sustainable human future we need to do more than think about who we have been and who we are. We need rather urgently to focus on the question of who we are hoping to become, and how we are going to get there. Thanks for your attention. Thank you Catherine I'm sure everyone found that as interesting as I did. Unfortunately, we had hoped that another academic would be joining us sort of the other half of this session today but I've just been told that they're not very well today so our apologies there that unfortunately they can't join us but what I will do is pop their email address in the chat box and send this out to all of you so that if you did have any questions that you can sort of follow them up with her. And also this might be a great opportunity if anyone does have any questions for Catherine that they may want to also pop in the chat and if they want to raise a hand I can also unmute you. But perhaps about this module, it could be about what Catherine was just talking about if you had any sort of follow on questions that might be quite interesting. Or just about the course in general. I'll just pop that in now but yeah if anyone has any questions feel free to also contribute as well. Yeah, sure if you guys have any questions or comments. Please don't be shy. You know I'm happy to answer any questions you have on the program or these topics or tell you a little bit about the courses that are the core courses of the program. Any kind of questions that you might have do feel free to fire them away. Is that somebody in the chatter is that spark a day away. Oh, for for net for the 2122. No, you mean the 2223 academic year. All our lectures right now are online and all tutorials are face to face. They haven't yet made a decision about what will happen in 2223 I would imagine if the levels of COVID remain as they are now we will be resuming face to face, but with COVID you just never know what's going to happen so I would say stay tuned, keep in touch about that. But I think that worse it would be lectures online tutorials face to face the way it is now. What is the type of work that students go on to explore. Oh this is interesting because I run a kind of a seminar series of professionalization series with the end make global future students and just yesterday we have one so this person that came works with the forest peoples program on indigenous basically indigenous rights human rights in Latin America. People have gone this is our first year of the MA global futures and sustainability so I don't know where they're going to go on to but it was previously we had an MA in the anthropology of development. There's a lot of different kinds of work in terms of environmental and social organizations and gos international development that people went on to work in through that program. I'm seeing that these current cohort is also interested in very similar types of work, although there's a few of them that are interested in working and I guess you would call it. It's business but not, you know, not major corporations but businesses that are working on adjusting to certain environmental regulations thinking about how to introduce sustainability measures into their businesses, and so forth so I would say, predominantly I think there's a lot of international aid institutions development organizations and NGOs but with this new core I'm seeing more into kind of, you know, research institutes think tanks and businesses. I'd like to know about the core modules of the anthropology MA. So I'm talking about the MA in global futures and sustainability. So this is different than the MA and social anthropology but just for us for MA of global futures and sustainability you take anthropology of sustainability in term one, you take anthropology of climate change and anthropology and how to change things of course it that focuses on how you move from these ideas to actually making change in the world in term to those are all those three are just your cohort. You also take ethnographic research methods. You also take a theory course on anthropological theory so you're required to take those five courses, and then you have three courses that you can that are known as options which you can take in language or you can take in any other department each department has a list of option courses that make available to people outside their department. So first connect education with activism with the school specifically. Well there's a couple, there's a couple of different ways this occurs for example I also teach on the MA and the anthropology of food. We have directed practical study where students are, you know, we'll work with an organization. For example, you know foraging organization in northern London that's about protecting areas for for public foraging. And we also have a program in migration that students can do an internship on migration with an organization that obviously makes a clear connection between your academic work and your practice. But I would also say, for example in the global futures we do have this course called how to change things where there is an emphasis on advocacy, and what you can do to actually make a difference in the world. Are there usually recordings of lectures even though they are held in person yes every lecture is recorded. What are the main differences with the m a global purchase via the MSc sustainable development course. I think you, is it is the MSc sustainable development in development studies. If you can let me know that I don't know where the MSc sustainable development is but I mean I think that we used to get a very similar course question about what is the difference between the anthropology of development and development studies. I guess it's in the development studies department and I think I think the major difference between these courses is in the approach. I mean anthropology is trying to understand challenge and somewhat problematize the way in which we understand the MSc the world that has led to particular outcomes, particularly with a focus on those who have been marginalized by processes of development or economic growth. Development studies is more apt to be a how to this is this is what sustainability. This is what sustainability means in various places this is how you actually institute sustainability in various programs and practices. So I would say that if you development studies tends to take a more common comments, if you will common sense accepted wisdom orthodox approach to development, whereas anthropology would challenge and question how we've we've come to the place we are. Again anthropology is really focused on how people all over the world construct their worlds construct their cultures. You know that is the focus of anthropology the field work, the knowledge is generated through the process of field work so you don't get that in development studies not to say development studies isn't great but it's a very different approach. How many mature students do you generally have. If you're looking at the anthropology of food, a lot anthropology of food, perhaps, maybe even half. Maybe, maybe, maybe a third, maybe a third hard to know what constitutes mature exactly but in the anthropology of food we tend to have a lot of people that have been out there practicing working, you know whether be in restaurants and pubs and the food industry and you know the whole gamut media. So they then come back to the MA anthropology of food to read to kind of reconnect the ideas that they've developed, but you know by being out there in the world and connecting them with the kind of academic practice. You say the readings and think are studied within the schools diverse southern and northern thinkers absolutely. I mean we've made a big. We had a big push and we're still in the midst of it to decolonize our curriculum, and to decolonize the institution more broadly at so as that is an a principle upon which education is based at so as. And so, you know, you find in most courses that there, there's, you know, as much representation of people from the global south as a global north, in order to kind of rectify the inequalities that you know the asymmetries and knowledge production that have been evidenced in higher education. So, okay that's orchid I don't know what is the focus of the students it's very broad sense. Okay, so it, I mean I could say that just from the anthropology of sustainability module. From ideas around what sustainability is to issues in the Anthropocene and climate change to how particularly extractive industries have contributed to both our miss reading of the environment and society but also the devastation that was brought to the earth as a result of mining and fossil fuel extraction. We talked some some about infrastructure, particularly water, water electricity infrastructure, and the inequalities and accessing infrastructure right efforts to make infrastructure more sustainable through greening the city through green growth. What else do we talk about we talk about food and sustainability. We deal with indigenous communities and the way in which indigenous communities are fighting for the protection of their land and resources. What are the alternative economies, in other words we discuss what are the alternative trajectories that are available to rethink where we are now and how can we achieve that that can be through, you know, whether we're talking about deep growth campaign circular economies, green growth. There's a variety of different sort of policy platforms that have been advanced in other, you know, to basically address the social and environmental challenges we face so we kind of, you know, basically discuss those as a group and critique them and find them. So I'd say in a nutshell what we're doing is really looking at the kind of the on the one hand the problems we face in the world with an unsustainable environmental social and economic model, and then secondly, how those problems are advanced in different places around the world right so that you get a broad perspective from anthropologists who have worked in the global south as well as the global north, and then the third part of the course is focused on okay so what do we do about all this Are BAs required desires for this study? What BAs? No BAs are required or desired. You don't need to have a BA in anthropology and we accept all BAs so there's no specificity there. What is website I can search more about the article in anthropology of social rope by lecture, I'm really interested in anthropology through evidence, what is website I can search more about the article. I want to know. You want to read an article that somebody at SOAS is written. If you go to our department and you hit, you press the toggle for, I think it's faculty or staff. It's one of those people, you know, and then we all have our individual profiles there. You can hit the tab for, press the tab rather sorry, publications and under publications you will see a list of the publications by each of the lecturers. If you're interested in one of them and you can't get access to them do feel free to contact that lecture to get directly saying that you're interested in their work or you know you can contact me and I can see if I can help you to find it. So when you mentioned working with indigenous community of chance again with students. No, I think that so as offers, we don't we do not I don't want to clarify that as part of the anthropology department we do not connect to you directly with different indigenous communities. We have a small dissertation grant small. That allows you to do research for your MA dissertation. But that entails you identifying your own contacts and making arrangements for your own field work we provide advice we provide support. We provide in some cases connections and you know ideas about how you could access different networks in the global south because we're an institution with lots of connections to the global south. But in terms of a sort of a program in which you are a son you are given the opportunity to work with a specific indigenous community. So that kind of internship program we're more like brokers were more in the sense of facilitating your connection with places rather than making that happen for you I hope that makes sense. Hey lovely. We don't have any more questions I think we can wrap up a little early there. We've got another one that's just come in. I'm actually going to be putting a list of readings that I'm going to suggest for people that are that are accepted into the program and want to do a little bit of pre reading. So a good sense of climate change and sustainability I'm not sure that you know the book by Brightman the anthropology of sustainability would be that useful to you and I might suggest that you focus more on the social and human aspects of sustainability in other words how are people in the global south conceptualizing their world. And that might be of more help for you than more sciency stuff. You could contact me directly at CD 17 so as I'd be happy to send you a few things that that you could that you could might find interesting. Can this be approached via art and communities. I guess you mean your dissertation. You can do your dissertation can be focused on you know really anything that is related to sustainability it's very much a broad church. You can include graphics films and things in your dissertation but as a present the dissertation still exists in the narrative form. In other words you would still have to write a dissertation even though you could include. You know different artistic representations in your dissertation so I guess I'm answering that from two different vantage points one is, you could look at our sustainability as part of your, as a focus of your dissertation project, but you wouldn't be able to for example, submit a painting as in lieu of your dissertation. However, you could, you know, include photographs of paintings or images of paintings in it as part of a wider narrative form. Okay, I think that's it for now. Thank you again. My email address is I'll just pop it in. I'll just pop that in the chat. You can see there's one last question that's coming in about internship opportunities. So maybe Catherine if you wouldn't mind finishing with that query, just while typing that in I will plug a session that we have coming up. So if anyone has any remaining questions or they want to talk to anyone from the recruitment team then we will have a session on the 13th of April, it's a live chat session. We will be emailing you about it so today this session was recorded, and we'll also be emailing you with the recording of that so you can rewatch it review it and if you do have any remaining questions, either specifically about the course then do you get in touch with Catherine, or if it's anything to do about your application or sell us more broadly, then you can come along to that session and ask our team as well. Catherine, if you wouldn't mind just quickly talking about internship opportunities. Before that we have an internship opportunity in the MA anthropology of food and in the MA migration studies, which is interdisciplinary not anthropology. We have informal internship opportunities that we have we are, as I mentioned earlier we, this is the first year that we've run the global futures and sustainability MA so we currently don't have an internship program. We are looking to develop one along the lines of the MA anthropology of food I doubt that will be 2223 it may be but it's, it's, it may not be. I did mention also that we have a course called how to change things which is based on advocacy and taking your educational learnings into the real world of practice so it's not an internship but it's similar to, I mean it has a practice focus I should say. Okay, lovely. Well, thank you again for everyone who joined us today and Catherine for her time. And we hope to be seeing some of you at the last very soon. Enjoy the rest of your day and take care. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.


In our last session, we talked about the importance of the community and today we are going to move ahead and talk about corporate governance and the government. Now, whenever we talk about the government, then the government basically has many pillars. It has the executive, it has the parliament, it has the judiciary, then allied pillars which are the media, the civil society primarily and again other minor elements of stakeholdership also. Now, when we talk about the government, then usually we think that the government is a regulator. No, the government is a facilitator. That is very important. So, when we look at the government as a regulator, then we have different dimensions of thinking and when we look at the government as a facilitator, then our interface and our interaction would be on a more positive scale. So, again it becomes extremely important that we realize the role of government. The government plays a key role in the corporate governance by defining the legal environment and sometimes by directly influencing managerial decisions. So, all of this is very important and we in Pakistan basically see that the government plays a major role because it can clamp down upon the community, it can send people to jails and it can also ensure that there is no law and order situation. We see that in various groups which are taking place and the fact that it plays a key role because mostly the politicians and the bureaucracy are catering to the needs of the government but also getting their needs met through the government and therefore it directly is influencing managerial decisions. Now, the following aspects play a critical role to write and then enforce contracts. This is very important. It is basically manifested with the government to oblige management to provide accurate and comprehensive information before the shareholders and therefore if there is no compliance then the government would move in to ensure compliance to vote on important issues to enforce the obligations of the board of directors to specify and have managerial incentive contracts in force. So, all of these would lead to a better organization and also ensure that everything is above the board and nothing is being hidden by the government whereby undue advantage could be taken and also tax breaks could also be taken. So, all of these things become very important to the contents of corporate governance and it is not a one-way channel. It actually has to be a two-way channel to ensure its efficacy and its effectiveness and also to create a better work environment for everyone. That is very, very important in that role of chaperoning and that role of acting as a supra pattern is very important in the context of the bank and also of the government and also of the various stakeholders which are involved with one particular organization. Political and economy forces that produce the laws, the enforcement and mechanisms, the bankruptcy processes and the ability of powerful managers to influence legislation will profoundly shape corporate governance. So, again what we see is that ladies and gentlemen, the managers or the management of an institution carries a lot of cloud because it can facilitate the process of voting, it can facilitate the process of elections and can also bankroll and sponsor different economic activities or different social activities which would give an edge to the particular person contesting in election and that would be unethical. At one stream the government owns the firm so that the government is charged with monitoring managerial decisions and limiting the ability of managers to maximize private benefits at the cost of the society at a least extreme level governments regulate corporations. So, again what we see is that the government can also on the orders of the court take complete control of a particular organization to see that nothing wrong is done and that all of the stakeholders are given their rights. So, all of these developments which have been taking place ensure a more participatory role, a more softened role, a role which is not linked with professionalism but is basically a personal role and all of that becomes extremely important and also the fact that the government should abstain from a regulatory context and try to adopt a facilitatory context and do away with red tape and do away with the road barriers and road bumps to ensure that the flow of business of different corporations is done in a much better way. The government regulates the activities and asset allocation of corporations and may even ensure corporate liabilities in the favorite industries even in countries that traditionally tend to disavow such support. So, again we see that the government becomes a regulator of assets and also have activities allocation and that is very important to monitor because otherwise there is a possibility of rights being infringed. The government regulates to maximize social welfare which it tends to promote through organizations limit adverse externalities and exploit positive ones, deal with the monopoly power and directly prohibit managers from undertaking socially adverse actions. So, again the government can catalyze good work, good opportunities and also good internships to the corporations, interns or MTOs which will lead to better trained, more efficient, more effective youthful resource power at the disposal of the corporation and basically fine tuned and trimmed through the UN umbrella. So, all of that is very important and we have to ensure that we remain within the ambit of social responsibility. The government regrets are unlikely to induce managers to maximize firm value rather the politicians frequently use state enterprises for personal gains. The evidence suggests that the public enterprises are extremely inefficient, produces and they frequently disregard social objectives as evidence by the finding that state enterprises are worse polluters than the private firm. So, what we see is again that the government is also playing multiple roles but it does have an overarching role, it does have a supreme role because laws are formulated by them but it is very important to understand what the law is about and how it is going to be implemented. Otherwise it would result in a trust deficit and that is something that we do not want because we are trying to improve upon the system where the government in every country exercises is certain amount of control over organizations and operations of the organization and the government could use this to steer organizations towards the path of good governance and that is extremely important. So, again ladies and gentlemen the role of government is very important. We basically call it the 3H and 1S model we see the hand, the heart and the head and in between we have a strategic unit which ensures that it gives direction and also tends to bifurcate the responsibilities of different stakeholders and different concerns to further provide an opportunity for the long activity of that particular cooperation. Thank you so much.


Hello, everyone. Greetings from London. Let me start by saying how wonderful it is to have been asked to be part of this Eden Conference 2020. I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Ellen Halsper and I'm a professor of digital inequalities at the London School of Economics and political science, where I work at the Media and Communications Department. The kind of work that I do looks at what the digitization of society means for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in particular. And that's also what my talk at the conference will kind of centre on. So I will discuss how our deep ideas and our thinking about who gets to take advantage of the digitization of society and the learning opportunities that are available in the digital world. And how those ideas have changed over time and also how the pandemic in particular has kind of been a wake up call for all of us who are looking at the kind of inequalities in these opportunities to take advantage of these digital technologies and the content that's available on them. And it has made us realise even further that not all young people are as digitally native as we think or thought they might have been. And I will look at these and the kind of evidence for these inequalities through two projects that I am working on. One is the youth skills or why skills project. And the other one is the from digital skills to tangible outcomes project or the disto project. So these studies allow us to kind of highlight which young people and their families are most at risk of being left behind as societies become increasing with digital. And not just because they don't have access or the right kinds of access, but also because they lack the resources that are needed, such as literacy or digital skills that are needed to be able to kind of reap the benefits, the online learning benefits that are available online. And also the kind of they might lack the resources, these skills to be able to avoid some of the risks that come with being online and being in this digital world. So for me it's important that it's not just about understanding who is and who isn't included in this digital society or able to participate in this digital world. But it's also really important to understand why, because when we understand why we can design more effective interventions or curricula shifts or develop support structures for those young people who are at risk of being excluded and not being able to take up these learning opportunities. So my talk will finish with a more kind of the practical implications for educators and policymakers and other stakeholders such as parents on where we can do the most effective interventions. Because I think all of us are interested in making sure that the future is not only just more digital, but also more equal in terms of the learning opportunities that are going to be available for future generations and the current generation, of course. So I really look forward to the conference. I hope you enjoyed this teaser and that you are getting excited about the conference. I will see you there. Thank you.


Okay, Angela, why don't we just start out by, you're describing sort of the nature of your research. I mean, it's, it's pretty interesting. So give it a go. I'm a biological oceanographer. I'm here at the University of Hawaii Manila. I've been here just a few years, but the reason for coming here was to work with this program called the Hawaiian Ocean Time Series. This was begun by Dave Carl and others 30 plus years ago. So it's this really just incredible community resource where we have this long time series record of ocean biology, ocean chemistry, ocean physics at a site about just to the north of Oahu, a place called Station Aloha. So what we're really doing in this time series is just documenting how these ecosystems work, how standard biological and chemical and physical properties change over various time scales from days to months to years to decades. And that's been my sort of heart's favorite research for quite a while here, even before I came to UH Manoa. But beyond that, we've worked in coastal upwelling regimes off the Pacific Northwest in Antarctica and in the Arctic as well. So from the time series, have there been major changes in that? You're looking at a water column, right? Yeah, we're looking at a, we call it a watch circle. You know, a few kilometers of a circle radius where we have deep water moorings where we do ship based sampling of the full water column from the very surface to the sea floor just right above the sea floor. So we're really looking at how various properties are changing in time. Some of the sort of highlights from this program are we've documented very clear and concise changes in seawater chemistry that reflect changes in CO2 from human emissions. More CO2 in the atmosphere, there's more CO2 in seawater as you're seeing air-sea gas exchange. We've got a really strong awareness now of the various climate drivers of ocean biogeochemistry and how it changes production of these ecosystems. And I would say this is probably one of the few time series that is sufficiently long enough that we've started to see emergence of ocean change within the context of the natural variability of these ecosystems. So are the things to be concerned about? Well, I mean, the CO2 certainly is something to be concerned about. So, you know, as I said, this exchange from anthropogenic, so as we emit CO2 into that, I'm seeing other greenhouse gases. There's exchange of that gas with the surface seawater. And that's changing the just fundamental chemistry of seawater. It's making it less basic. There's a process called ocean sophistication that you probably would have heard of. And in changing the acidity of seawater, the pH of seawater, what you've really done is you've used change the environment that these organisms are living in. So for certain organisms that need to build shells, little coccolithophores, or coral reefs, it makes it more challenging for them to really build the environment that they are so reliant upon. So that's one process. You know, obviously changes in temperature on a global scale are concerning. We see that particularly in the Pacific Northwest. You probably heard of the blob that was there a few years back. Some of the temperatures that we've been observing globally around the Arctic are quite dramatic as well. You're seeing 90 plus days off of Anchorage and two to three degree Celsius anomalies off the waters in that coastal environment. Those do have pretty profound impacts for ocean ecosystems. Talk to me a little bit about the impact that the onset of COVID-19 had on you.  I run a seagoing program. So this immediately posed challenges because going to see on a research vessel, although we call them cruises, they're certainly not luxurious. No shuffleboard. No shuffleboard on the Lido deck, nothing like that. You know, you're working in close quarters over the long hours, and that's not something that is conducive with the changes that were necessary to make to protect the science, the Marine Center, the ship's crew from potential exposure to COVID. So in the very beginning, those of us myself included who went on the cruise after the pandemic outbreak. We went into strict quarantine, you know, each and every one of us were isolated in our homes without, you know, interaction with other people. We were doing daily temperature monitoring, we got tested two weeks before the research expedition, tested again three days prior, and then moved on to the vessel but with a severely reduced crew. So we were only able to sail on this giant vessel, the Kilimoana, that's a beautiful vessel with only 11 science crew versus the up to 26 that we would normally take. So obviously, we were not able to do as much in the amount of time that we had, and sometimes it took, you know, working a little bit longer a little bit harder than we had in the past. And that being said, you know, we were one of the very few that were lucky enough to be actually able to go to sea. There were certainly many other groups that off of the islands that either because their labs were closed or travel was restricted, or a variety of other reasons were unable to participate in planned cruises. So for the entire research fleet are along the around the United States and even globally. There was a significant reduction in ship days. So the number of vessels going to see and carrying science. We were viewed as one of the essential activities, the White Ocean time series being a central National Science Foundation funded activity so with those quarantine efforts in place and then hence testing. We were able to get out there and make the measurements that we needed and in 2020 we had 50 days at sea, which is our normal allocation of ship days. But those, those were hard one. It's a, it's a strange reality right wearing masks at sea and distancing so you can all sit in the galley at the same time and you can't serve yourself and you can't just, you know, commune with one another like you normally would and you know you're doing these operations over the side that can be physically strenuous and doing that with a mask was was quite strange. And you know we kept that up for all of 2020 and are still keeping up those protocols in place for 2021. So it's a strange says continued.  You know, I guess what it's done is is really make us think about, you know, what our core measurements are, and how we can best allocate our time and resources to protect that core set of measurements and to make sure that the time series integrity is extended. So some of the cruises in 2021, we extended them in time. So we still did the same amount of work, it just took us a little bit more time, because we had fewer people. And, you know, that's, that's been the real challenge but again we are, we are some of the very lucky ones with the numbers being what they are in Honolulu with our research site being within a one day steam of the port which is another restriction that you know has been able to do with all the samples which operates the fleet has had. It's more likely to be able to go to see if you're close to the port we are. So we've sort of passed all these tests and and been able to with the reduced personnel, you know, make these really critical measurements and do so in a way that protects the health of the scientists as well as the health of the crew. So I mean it's almost sounds like, even though it's been a pain. You've pretty much been able to sail through. This is a good analogy for certain. You know that the timing of it's been challenging it's certainly challenging for the Marine Center because they've got crew that they're swapping out every three months. And so they've got to build in time for the crew to quarantine. There's ship schedules as well. A lot of the work that was canceled in 2021 people are hoping to get out to see in 2020 or canceled in 2020. People are hoping to get out to see 2021 2022 so there's a real, you know, crunch for people trying to get the work that they have funded done in a way. Do you know specifically about other places where this has affected their work a little more than yourself. Yeah, I mean we had I was part of one proposal that was supposed to go to the Arctic. And because of, you know, variety of scheduling issues and ship issues and travel issues. And obviously the fact that some of those more remote communities and the Arctic in Alaska, you know, have not been impacted by COVID and would like to keep it that way. So there's been for a lot of the Arctic researchers some very strict rules that have reduced the amount of science that is done in that region. You know, every, every ship is dealing with this a little bit differently. We here have 14 day quarantines prior to the Lord loading the vessel. There are some groups that are working on 10 day quarantine some on seven day quarantines. You know, obviously that comes with the cost to if you're traveling, because you now somehow out of your grant need to find some funding for, you know, hotel or lodging that's in a safe manner. Those costs and, you know, restrictions to travel and restrictions to access to vessels have impacted scientists around the country. The main things I wanted to explore in this documentary was kind of a combined effects of climate change in COVID. And just in passing you mentioned one that I haven't thought of. Because you were saying that that many of the I'm assuming indigenous communities up in Alaska, if they've not been affected by COVID, and yet they have. I mean if they're shut down if climate change is already causing, you know, permafrost and melt, flooding, etc. And now they're being shut down by COVID, even if they haven't been affected. Yeah. So that's kind of a two for there. Are you seeing that. Not directly here. I mean, certainly we know in Hawaii that, you know, native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are more impacted by COVID. As are any families that live in, you know, multi generational housing as well so we're not necessarily seeing that impact our science but just as a human and a resident of the state, you know, we are worried for and concerned, you know about the preferential impact of COVID, you know on some of these populations. And I'm wondering, you know, for for quite a while now there's been a lot of climate deniers climate change deniers, and we've had, and we have had sort of COVID 19 deniers. Just, does this sort of. How do you feel about that. There are other political controversies, right. I mean, I feel that now oceanography science and in general it's at its heart apolitical. You know, of course people have differing opinions about whether or not humans are driving climate change. But our job is to collect the data and analyze the trends and in doing so we see just clear, obvious fingerprints of humanity on our ocean ecosystems. And, you know, I think most people love the ocean, and I hope that they would accept and support science that is intended to understand how the oceans work and how they might be changing. In this moment that we're having in history, science should be lauded. Not my research, but with, we've seen these multiple unprecedented vaccine developments on time scales that we've never seen before. And these developments were the work of, you know, dedicated teams of, of scientists trained virologists. And then there's the simple fixes, right wearing a mask, socially distance, you know, all the way up to these complicated technological innovations that we're seeing in the vaccines. So I think that it really shows how invaluable science is to our society. And I would like to think that, you know, time series are playing our part as well where we're able to collect this data and point to the ways in which our planet is changing and sound the alarm case, you know, we can enact some change to preserve these environments. But how do you sound the alarm when science itself has sort of been politicized? You know, we keep showing it over and over. I'm personally like not super comfortable in front of cameras or, you know, doing interviews or outreach, but I will push myself as much as I can to let people know like you can look at these data sets here in Hawaii we've got the Keeling curve, you know, the CO2 data that's collected on Mauna Kea, we've got ocean acidification measurements that we're collecting as part of hot, you know, these are open access data. They're really straightforward. They're data that we share in every single class from undergraduates to graduates, data that I talk about to my family and friends, and it's just, it's demonstrative. There's no argument about it. CO2 measurably is increasing in the oceans and the atmosphere and we have ideas of what the consequences for that are going to be. We know that global temperatures are increasing. There's no dispute about it. So I think sounding the alarm and just being very consistent and resolute about the data that we're collecting, sharing that as broadly and often as we can. Being honest about the uncertainties with this data and creating this conversation, encouraging this conversation. That's, that's about as political as I think we can get. My nephew was a climate historian at Reed College. He's a history major and he wrote a book called Behind the Curve. And one of the sort of takeaways from that book was that scientists didn't do a good enough job of telling their story. You know, they buried their nose in the science that did great science, but they didn't get out there and explain why this is important. Yeah, and I can understand that we're not trained as to communicate in that particular way we, we are trained and we learn this language in this vernacular that it's very specific to our individual fields. So often we don't have the, the language that is going to effectively communicate the data that we're so close to our hearts. I do think that's changing. I do think that there's a real palpable understanding in the geosciences in particular that we've got to do better job of sharing our data on a broad platform because there are so many of these things that we're seeing that just aren't, they're not controversial, they're not, they're not political. These are changes that we are observing on our planet and we need to do something about it. But you've got to start by acknowledging that, you know, making up data, you know, make money in science. You know, it's not, this is not a political act to observe the world around you. Right. This is, this is an act of care and love for this one planet that we share. Yeah, the environment though does affect science. I mean the political environment and I'm just wondering you, do you have any more optimism now that there's a new administration. I wouldn't have lost my optimism in the past administration, you know, because the people who are making these decisions, you know, when I, when I write a grant I'm writing it to the National Science Science Foundation to private foundations like the Simons Foundation to NOAA, to others. The people who work in those environments, they are passionate scientists, right. They've spent their lives doing science, communicating science, and care very much about allocating those funds in a way that's the best advanced science. So, you know, the budget at NSF I know that there were, you know, efforts to cut that budget, but that budget was ultimately protected by Congress. I hope that it will be expanded and protected again under this administration. I haven't left, left lost hope due to the presidents because I think when you filter down through the ranks, you know, we are NSF is full of scientists as is NOAA, and a lot of these, you know, private foundations as well or are really lifting up scientists and giving them a voice to protect not just the applied science but the basic science that the science is just saying I want to understand how something works is ultimately that will matter. So I do feel hopeful. I think that we are as a community doing much better job articulating why science needs to be, you know, continue to support it at multiple levels. Yeah, yeah. Now, are there any upsides to all of this. I was thinking of, you know, bounce back I've heard at Kanama Bay, you know, and what about lower carbon emission carbon emissions from driving less I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we have seen silently hearing saying yeah, let's stay down for a while. I'm sure there's quite a few marine organisms that are looking around and be like I'm happy to be alone again. To have fewer humans and we have seen some of these ecosystems thrive. You know, it used to see in 2019 I think something like 3000 sunscreen snorkelers every single day. Now in 2021 they've restricted this to 720 people per day which still sounds like a lot but they're going to be closed every Monday and Tuesday. The, the improvement of the ecosystem state in that place has really provided a renewed focus on conservation of these natural places and that's a bright outcome that certainly is in terms of our carbon footprint. You know, that's, that's a little harder. We know that lockdowns have led to abrupt declines in emissions. The latest data I've seen from the global carbon project was that carbon dioxide emissions declined by about 7% in 2020. And most of that was due to reduction in driving and transportation. And, you know, as I mentioned before, it's, it's just a simple fact that human activities and our global energy emissions that they impact the concentration of greenhouse gases and atmosphere that leads to warming. And this decline 7% it's huge it's something like 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide, but even that large reduction, it won't make a dent in the atmospheric CO2 concentration. It'll barely be perceptible in this large integrated atmosphere. So back to Paris Accord numbers that was suggesting that we needed to cut 1 to 2 billion tons of CO2 every single year, if we want to meet the climate change limits for the Paris agreement. And that limit is to limit the global warming to about two degrees above pre industrial. So we've got to find ways to keep up these reductions and our emissions without lockdowns right when we go back to our normal lives. But I think if there's a silver lining in this it's that 2020 really does show to me at least that these coordinated changes in social behavior can truly produce some deep emissions cuts. And we can do this we can reduce emissions and we can do it without lockdowns. It's just going to require cooperation and intention. And what we're working against that a little bit is that we've seen it here in the Bay Area San Francisco Bay Area where bark ridership is is down dramatically and there's some concern that some of these, you know, high speed transportation mass transit systems aren't going to survive. They don't have the ridership. So I think that was been trying to build a mass transit for since I went to school there. Yeah, like I said, I've only been here for a few years but it seems like a quagmire. Yeah, I am hopeful for it I am a high, you know, strong believer in, you know, public transportation. I, there's a lot we can do here to improve bike lanes to improve, you know, reduce the number of cars, etc. So I, I think that on an island is a good place to do that. I'm hopeful that we're going to continue both statewide and nationally to significantly, you know, add money to fix these problems and support public transportation. Are you seeing any other issues that you'd like to raise about climate change and the coronavirus. Any thoughts that you've had about this. Well, I mean, the intersection of these themes climate change and, and pandemics in general. I think it should remind us that we're not separated by, by borders by, by languages by color that we're all sharing the same planet. To me, it's really obvious that we're altering our planet in ways that are going to burden the next generations and reduce their quality of life. And as I said, I think the silver lining in this is that this shows that together when we act as, you know, global collective we can reduce our impact. We can embrace resilience and we cannot ignore the changes that we're inflicting upon the natural world. And if the pandemic has taught us anything it should be that there are consequences for ignoring the problems. Great assuming it'll just go away you'll wake up tomorrow and it will be gone. Right that doesn't pan out very well for a response to viruses and it certainly won't pan out very well as a response to climate change. Thank you very much that's, that's, that's interesting to me just as a newbie coming into it. I guess what I'm struck with too is, you know, as, as, you know, as Westerners we tend to think of yes or no right or wrong this problem or that problem. But when you look at climate change and the coronavirus, we see all these connections. Just think of the meat industry and how that is affecting both the spread of disease and also, you know, the destruction of the climate and I hadn't thought and I don't know whether how scientists look at this who are they always looking for these interrelationships and has that taught us anything. Yeah, I mean, I think some certainly are, you know, science sometimes can be reductive, you know, my PhD for example was on trichodesmium nitrogen fixing cyanobacterium that lives in the subtropical oceans. I know a lot about trichodesmium. So you get to that point where you're trained, you know, and it's sort of really reductive looking at individual problems where you can start to make, you know, some progress. And then it's hard to take 10 steps back and see how it all is connected together. Oceanography is a system science, you can't just focus on biology without thinking of the chemistry and how the physics are changing those environments. So if, if there's any field in geosciences that's looking at connections, it's oceanography. And I know that there's a time it sounds like your nephew is one of researchers that you know are looking at how humans and society are interacting with our environment. And what we can do to change perceptions to enact change to work across societies as a whole. And that sort of cooperation is really going to be key to getting out of this pandemic to getting out of, you know, to really thinking about how our emissions activities are changing our climate. Well, I really want to thank you for your time and I hope you get out on your ship again. I'm going out again in February and they actually loaded today and are heading out right now. Oh, I'm envious. You are welcome at once the travel ban is lifted to come out and join a cruise we take volunteers all the time. I'll be there.


Hello, everybody. Bonjour. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome to our session living of the land techniques in managed Kubernetes clusters. My name is Shea Berkovitz. I'm proud to be a part of amazing with threat research team. You might know us from these projects and with me today. And I'm Ronan Shustin. I'm from the WIS vulnerability research team and you might know us from cool researchers like broken sesame, Bing Bang and many more. All right, so what are we talking here today? Living of the land techniques. Let's go to basics. Let's start with the definition. Miriam Webster dictionary defines living of the land as getting food by farming, hunting, etc. Okay, we know that but there is this element of using what's available in the environment. And that's so true for classic cybersecurity definition, right? Albeit in a classic definition, it's talking more about binaries, binaries on the host, right? So those two big projects, GTFO beans, LoL bus projects that pretty much a list, categorized list and collection of the binaries that can be exploited by the attackers once they have the initial access on the host. Okay, so my favorite from the OSCP days for those in the know was the search detail, which I used to download enumeration scripts from to my Windows host. In the absence of Coral or Wget, for example, that's classic example. And that's fine. That was okay back then when when we said initial access and attacker, we thought about VM or host perhaps after escaping some kind of application, web application, right? Finding the RC. However, this has changed right now. Attacker might find themselves in different contexts. It can be pod within the Kubernetes. Of course, it can be node. It can perhaps even be lambda function, right? They might own the lambda function in the cloud. Okay, so as the definition of attack chain and the attack processes has evolved, so should the definition of living on the land techniques evolve? Just like the metapod Pokemon. Okay, so for the definition, for the updated definition, I want to take you to the CISA join guidance. So they released it in February 10th, if I'm not mistaken. So pretty much a month ago, CISA and allied agencies released the guidance for on-prem and cloud living of the land techniques. And even though they released it past our CFP submission and acceptance, we thought it's going to be a shame not to include it because what they found there, their thoughts really resonated with us. So let's take their definition. Native tools and processes on systems. I would also add work flows and second point is lower likelihood of being detected or blocked. Okay, so I think those are two important points that describes together the definition. But now, what makes living of the land techniques, let's say, model techniques different from other attack scenarios? Well, there are three points. First, there's a lack of established baselines on the defense side. Second, the lack of conventional IOCs. And third, it just makes attackers job easier, right? Because they avoid, they don't need to develop their own tools. They just use whatever they have. So altogether, it makes a real problem to recognize, to detect, model techniques. Okay, specifically in Kubernetes clusters. Now, CISA guidance talks about cloud and on-prem, which is a shame because we're at KubeCon. So we want to extend it to Kubernetes. Not just extend, but also enumerate. So we'll present a series of demos about those techniques to persuade you that this is a real problem, that there are multiple techniques are there. And we'll try to standardize them somehow. For standardization, we'll use threat metrics. Don't worry, not this one. We'll focus on the Kubernetes threat metrics, okay? Now, when they're talking about threat metrics, which stages of the threat metrics, the model techniques are actually applicable to. Pretty much all the stages, like beside the initial access, pretty much everything may be an impact. It's pertinent to model techniques. They can be abused anywhere. Why manage clusters? Why are we talking about manage clusters specifically? Well, using the academic language is because they have a lot of stuff. Okay, default AKS cluster, empty cluster that you stage. It has all these workloads running.  So we can abuse this, right? Additional services means more complexity, means increased attack surface. It's always true. And we love attack surface as security researchers. Okay, where can we take the model techniques? Well, of course, attackers in the typical scenario, attackers find themselves in the execution into the pod, right? Like some kind of application they see, they find, they execute in the pod, so there's a pod image binaries. But it's not very interesting. It can be sent to us, which is huge, but it could be also distro less, which doesn't even have shell. And so there's a huge variance in the, in the model binaries that attackers might find there. But how about Kubernetes node image? That's more stable. You can see in EKS, GKS, AKS, all their AMIs pack tons of tools, useful tools, in this case, for just to download something from the internet. Do you really think Kubernetes worker node needs SFTP? I'm not sure. I don't know, but it's there, so we might use it. Okay, but this assumes that the attacker has Kubernetes node access, which not always true, of course. Okay, then what else can we use? We can use middleware workloads. Deployments, staples, set Kubernetes object. Diamond sets even better. Why? Because they run on every pod. So it doesn't matter where attacker finds themselves, they can use that workload. Also, cron jobs, jobs, which is great. Why? Because they are periodic in nature. But also users and groups, and the various managed solutions, they add their own users and groups on top of what vanilla Kubernetes cluster already has. And even core control plain functionality, which we're not going to talk today, but there's been a research around how to use, for example, Kubernetes API server for CSRF. Okay, let's dive into the specific use cases. We'll start with the persistence. For this, we'll use our shackle Pokemon, which is a symbol of persistence, of course. So as a symbol of persistence, we'll abuse the node problem detector. Now, for those of you who never heard about node problem detector, it's a tool that presents on all GKE and AKS clusters. In fact, it's a system deep process on the worker nodes. It can be installed as a diamond set as well. And it's also installed on many EKS clusters because it appears in the recommendation on the best practices guide, where they say go install it as a diamond set. This process, it performs various diagnostic activities. It runs as root on the node. And make sure the health of the node is fine by performing various activities. So let's focus on the GKE. Let's see how it looks on the GKE. If you run PSA UX on the worker node, this is what you get.  What are those JSONs saying? They're saying what to do, what diagnostics action to perform. So in this case, CCTL monitor JSON says every six hours, I hope you see the fourth line, every six hours, run this Python with the following parameter. Okay, good. As an attacker, we immediately say, what can we do if we override this JSON? Well, not much because you still need to restart the node problem detector to get the new config. And that may be a bit noisy. However, what can we do if we manage to override the Python? Right? So you see where I'm going with that. Before we put together a demo in the tag chain, quickly I want to talk to you about leaky vessels, which was a set of vulnerabilities. Who here heard about leaky vessels? Yeah, okay, so I'll be very, very short. Set of vulnerabilities, run, see, build kit, allows attackers to build time escape and contain a run time escape. Okay, and that's what we're going to use in the demo. So now we can put together a tag chain. Attacker uses compromised image, poisoned image, you name it, uses leaky vessels to escape on the node. We override as an attackers the Python, the CCTL monitor Python, and we'll let node problem detector to pick the new and execute the new Python. The new Python will communicate with the C2 server. What will we achieve by this? We'll bypass kubot it, we'll bypass admission controller, of course, because we're not going through the Kubernetes API access. That one is blind to our actions. We'll probably bypass sensor EDR solution. Why? Because we're piggybacking on a known process. Privilege escalation, persistency, evasion. Okay, let's see this in action. Okay, so on the left side I have access to the pod. That's a GKE pod. And Andy Dufresne is my hacking pod that has execution on the node. That's the only person, purpose. So I'm showing you that the host name of the node is GKE Shea something. That's our worker node. And now I'm showing you the content of that CCTL monitor JSON. You see the location, NPD custom plugin slash config. That's on the node. And now I'm showing you the content of the CCTL monitor Python that we will overwrite. Now it's not very interesting. It's just diagnostic pod that node problem detector runs periodically every six hours. It's okay, but we will overwrite it. That's the interesting part. How will we overwrite it? By using the malicious image. So unsuspecting cluster operator will run this innocent image called CVE 2024 21626. This image in the bottom right corner, as you can see. Uses this work there. It's abuses the leaky vessels run see vulnerability. It has only one command. It overwrites the existing CCTL monitor that pi on the node. You see that path traversal slash home slash Kubernetes with our own CCTL monitor pi, which what it does. Just a good old Python reversal to our C2 server. At the bottom top corner at the top right corner, you see our C2 server running on port 4444. And now cluster operator is running the starting the image and it's done. You see leaky completed. Okay, something happened. So it pulled the image. So I guess it worked, but of course we need to check. So let's see how the actual Python looks like. I'm dumping the Python. And you can see that this is a new Python code. Okay, so leaky vessels worked. Good, now what we need to do, we just need to wait for six hours for the reversal connection. Of course I trimmed the video. So now any moment now, there we go. We have the connection on the C2 server. The connection is a root on the worker node. You can see the hostname, the hostname of the worker node. We have access to all the processes, including the node problem detector by itself. We don't have any namespace restrictions. And we have access to our libcubelet where, of course, cubelet keeps all the information about local pods, including service account tokens, et cetera. So pretty cool if you ask me. All right, so that's persistency. Let's move on to collection. Collection for people who are into the Pokemons. I think Paragon is the one that represents the collection. Information assembly. So I hope you see where I'm going with it. Fluent bit, okay. Fluent bit is a very known log management processor and management solution. We love it because it's installed by default on GKE and AKS. And it's recommended for installation on EKS BP guide as well. The configuration affecting the Fluent bit is going through the config map, fluent-bit-config. And this config looks like this, looks as follows. There's a sequence of input, parser, filter commands, sorry, sections, which tells Fluent bit what to do, which logs to assemble and where to send them. Now, as an attacker, we immediately ask ourselves, okay, if we can modify it, what happens? Good things happen. Because we can use exec plugin. As an attacker, of course, we love plugins that's called exec because they do exactly that. They execute the commands. So in this case, this is an example from the official documentation of the Fluent bit where ls slash var slash log will execute every one second. Okay, how can we abuse it? So here's our attack chain. Assuming we have update on the config map permissions, okay, or more, or more powerful permissions, but that's the artwork that we need. We will add input session and output session, sections to the config map, and we will let new Fluent bit pods to get the new config map and to send the logs to C2. That takes filtration. And again, we bypass Q-body, we bypass Q-admission controller, we bypass sensor, and our malicious config map is resistant to restarts because now it resides in its CD. So again, we achieve collection, we achieve persistency, we achieve evasion. Okay, let's see this in action. I hope you can hear me because the noise is quite serious there. Okay, so on the left, you see that I'm running two Fluent bit pods because it's a demon set. I have two nodes. Now I'm showing you the config map that's affecting the Fluent bit config. It's called Fluent-bit-config. And by the way, this is EKS cluster. I guess you can see this by Amazon-cloudwash namespace. Now this is the content of this config map. It's pretty messy when unformatted, but it starts with application-log.conf and it defines the collection of certain application logs. But I want to show you our malicious Fluent bit config that is very similar to original config. However, it adds two small sections. It abuses that exact plugin that I was talking about. Input, output. In the input, we're asking Fluent bit, please execute hostname and id and ls-la. Every five seconds, we control the interval and send it to our C2 server on port 4444 over plain HTTP. That's it. So now I'm starting my C2 server Python server and applying the new config map and hoping that it'll work. So nothing happened. Why? Because the pods still haven't applied the new config. Right? So here I'm killing the pod on purpose, the second pod.  And because it's a demon set, the new pod will respond and pick the new configuration. In the production cluster, however, there is a potential process of shrinking and growing. So every new node that comes up because of the scheduling or load, they will pick the new config, the malicious config. All right. So now I'm deleting the pod and I expect the new pod to start automatically. There it is. The last pod, you see five seconds? That's the new pod. So now any moment now, we're getting the information. We're getting the output of fluent bit running those shell commands. You can see the first one is exact. The second one is hostname. Sorry, the first one is hostname. Second one is ID. And then the output of that. And you see the user agent is fluent bit. And fluent bit is so nice that it's packing. It's in a nice JSON. Time stamps every command that it's running. So because it's, of course, lock management solution. Right. And at this point, I'm passing to Ronan for privilege escalation. All right. Thank you, Shai. So now we'll talk a bit about privilege escalation techniques. So from CISA's guidance, they show us basically a lot of privilege escalation techniques on cloud environments. However, of course, we are at KubeCon and we are interested in managed clusters. So let's see how we can use those privilege escalation techniques and apply those on managed clusters. So the first example we chose to show you today is the Azure Kubernetes service and more specifically how we can use the entry ID authentication combined with some user misconfigurations in our advantage. So let's first see how many different authentication and authorization methods EKS offers. So the first one is local accounts with Kubernetes role with access control. Basically, the one we all know. The second one is the entry ID with the Kubernetes role with access control basically maintaining the authorization model. And the third one is the entry ID authentication, but this time it is combined with the Azure role with access control, which is Azure's own controls, which are not explicitly unique to the Kubernetes. It also supports many other services. So in the next few slides, we'll focus only on clusters which are configured with the entry ID authentication. So let's imagine we are a regular user and we want to perform some kind of operations in our cluster. How will it look like? So we first have to perform a login to our identity provider. In our case, it's the entry ID. Next, we'll receive a token which we'll then use against our Kubernetes cluster. If you use the Azure CLI or other things, your cube cuddle already should be ready to do so automatically. So then we'll perform our operation with the token and actually behind the scenes, it will perform the authentication against an external webhook server, which will then validate the GWT token, perform the Microsoft API graph for various user details and return it back to the Kubernetes API server, which will now have to authorize the request in some cases. And there are also another external webhook server which is responsible for the authorization. But if, for example, the Kubernetes API server authorizes the request, then it will also perform the request and return the data back to the user. Now, I think the most interesting part in this section is we're still authenticating with the entry ID. And it means that basically every server's principle, every user in our directory, which directory is basically equivalent to tenant, will be able to authenticate to our cluster. Now, it doesn't mean there will be automatically granted to perform any operations around cluster, but they'll still be authenticated. And let's keep that in mind in the next few slides. So let's imagine we somehow obtained random server's principal credentials in our directory. How will it look like when we want to authenticate to perform some kind of operations on a cluster which is configured with the entry ID? So we first will use those credentials and we'll have to generate a token which we'll then use against our cluster. And we can do this with the curl command. Next, we'll use kubectl against our cluster and, for example, perform the get secret operation. And, of course, we've been denied because we're not authorized to perform any operation. And however, let's see what do the lock shows behind the scenes. So we can see the response status, basically the same error we received before. But let's focus on the user section and, more specifically, on the groups. So we can see that we are part of the system authenticated group. We are a random user in our directory. It's part of the system authenticated group which basically groups all the authenticated identities. And now why is it even interesting for us? So we've seen many cases that cluster administrators tend to trust the system authenticated group and bind to it roles which may contain higher privileges. So this basically combined with your ability to authenticate to a cluster configured with the entry ID can be an open door for proliferation and lateral movement techniques. Now, finally, Jiki also behaved the same. I think a couple of months ago, security researchers found that every Google account could authenticate to any GKE cluster and be also part of the system authenticated group and they also found the same result that many users tend to trust the system authenticated group and bind to it a role which may contain higher privileges. So now let's see a short demo on how it works. All right, so excuses for the small font. So let's say we have a cluster which is configured with the entry ID authentication and we have a cluster all binding which binds the power for all to the system authenticated group. Basically grants us pod, get pod, list pods and all those stuff, let's secrets. And now we'll use a random service principal credentials to generate a token which will be and then used against our Kubernetes cluster which is configured with the entry ID. Then we'll use the token for example to perform the get deployments operation and we can see that of course we've been denied because we are not authorized to perform the operation but let's see what actually we can do and we can see that we can get pods, list pods and list secrets because we are indeed part of the system authenticated group. So let's try and use our permissions now to get those resources. All right, so that's basically it for the demo and now we'll talk about AKS pod identity. So for those who are not familiar with the AKS pod identity, it's a new feature AWS released a few couple months ago also and basically helps bridging access of service accounts to AWS resources. Now in the next few slides we'll see an example of how we can use the pod, the AKS pod identity in our advantage using the host network through configuration. So let's see at a very high level how it works. I won't really get into details. So after installing the AKS pod identity add-on on our cluster, we're introduced with two new endpoints. The first is a pod identity web book and the second one is a demon set called AKS pod identity agent which actually serves as an identity role feature, let's say. So from now on each pod which is configured with a service account that wants to have an access to AWS resources and is configured to have a role will actually perform an HHP request to the AKS pod identity demons at which sits on the same working node and will basically ask it to fetch the necessary role. And of course it will do that and it will return the role to the pod and then it will be able to access its configured AWS resources. So now let's see how we can use that with the host network through configuration as a possible attacker. So let's say we have a working node which contains two pods. The first pod is pod A which contains the host network through configuration for those who are not familiar with what is host network through configuration. It basically allows the pod to access the network adapters of the worker node with the right capabilities. It also allows a network capture of all the traffic from the worker node. Let's assume the malicious actor was able to get access to pod A and next we'll have pod B which will happen to have a service account which has access to S3 buckets. Now the slide before I told you that to have an access now for those resources it first has to send a request behind the scenes to the EKS pod identity agent which sits on the same working node and then it will receive the necessary token that will allow it to access the S3 buckets. Now because from pod A we have the capability to perform a network capture we can possibly capture the token received from the EKS pod identity to pod B because the traffic between them is HTTP and not HTTPS. So now let's see a demo on how it works. All right so on the left side we'll create a pod which will have the host network through configuration and basically allow an attacker to perform a network capture. We'll also have another pod which we'll call a bucket reader which will have a service account which is configured to have access to an S3 bucket and we'll try to simulate the for example the STS get caller identity to basically show us what role do we have and behind the scenes it should perform a request to the EKS pod identity and receive its role. On the right side we'll now perform the network capture and then we'll see that we are able to capture the response from the EKS pod identity agent and receive the token. So we can see that we were able to basically receive the token from the EKS pod identity by a network capture and now we can use that for example from pod A which is an attacker to access the identity and possibly the S3 bucket of pod B. So now I'll pass the mic back to Shai to conclude our presentation. Thank you. Thanks Renan. So that was a privilege escalation from the Kubernetes into the cloud. So I guess impact is also one of the stages that impacted by the live and all the LAN techniques. All right so I hope we persuaded you that there's a real problem out there in managed Kubernetes clusters. And we need to do something about it. What can we do though? Well how about we start with awareness? How about we update the threat metrics to include live and all the LAN components such as node problem detector, flu and B it and there are others as well that we didn't include in the presentation. That's a good first step. But maybe we can do more. We're planning to create a project, a GitHub or website that will collect those techniques something like a lull bus project. Maybe kube lulls. If you have funny little witty name that you want to suggest for this project, Pingas will be happy to hear that. Also we would love to encourage the CSPs to publish whatever they have in the managed clusters. K-Bom or call it any other word but ultimately the users want to know what they run in the clusters. Okay right now that's not the situation. Think about vulnerability management. How can we trace? How do we know in which clusters, which versions we have vulnerable component? We don't. So this is not everything but I think this is a good several steps towards solving the problem. Towards that same baseline that CISA guidance talks about. But we probably don't really understand what the baseline looks like. But it just steps into the right direction I think. Okay this is all we have for today. Thank you all for attending. If you have questions feel free but we're going to hang around here as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello. I have a question. You showed a nice example with the fluent bit but generally whatever solution do you use for logs? The current situation in Kubernetes is that it's always going to be a high-privileged pod. Logs are generally just reading a stream of text right? So is there really a need to have a high-privileged pod for such a simple use case? And are you aware of any work in Kubernetes ecosystem to change that architecturally? Well it's not really a high-privileged pod. It's just the fluent bit actually has just sensitive mappings into varlib, kubelet in order to collect the logs. So it's not high-privileged. It just exfiltrates the data right? And the key here is just to understand the risks in your managed clusters. Let's say CSPs providers that don't tell us that if you give config map update permission to somebody else that can lead to the whole cluster compromise. They don't say it right? But it's true. It's the reality. So I think that's the knowing those risks is a good first step. But I agree. I don't think everything can be non-privileged. Okay. Thanks. Thank you.