Over the last decade, the eBPF open-source project quietly laid the groundwork for major evolutionary gains in Linux subsystems and how they keep pace with the new world of microservices and distributed applications. Today, that foundation has made possible eBPF “programs” that bring new approaches to classic challenges in distributed systems. One of the most interesting examples of an eBPF program with a lot of momentum is Tetragon — the open-source project tackling some of the run-time security’s trickiest requirements for developers and platform engineers. I interviewed Jeremy Colvin, senior engineer at Isovalent, to learn more.
Q&A With Jeremy Colvin
Q: How did eBPF lay the groundwork for programs like Cilium and Tetragon, and why is the ability to add programs to the kernel (without modifying the kernel) kickstarting so many interesting new programs?
