Project Trinidad and Pixie Partnership

Here at xLabs, we are excited to share an update on the evolution of how we are tackling modern application security. We continue to focus on applying Machine Learning to layer 7 East-West API traffic in Kubernetes applications in order to detect zero-day attacks and are thrilled to share an expansion of our collaboration with the folks at Pixie.

For anyone following along, we wrote previously on our usage of Pixie. At the time, we were building our own sensor as it was appropriate for our early exploration. As a review, our sensor's job was to collect data from worker nodes in a Kubernetes cluster. Stirling, a component within Pixie, was part of our sensor.

So what's changed, you might ask? Our update is that we have decided to expand our dependency on Pixie. There are several reasons for this decision. First, we have always known that we needed eBPF to accomplish the benefits of Trinidad. As we have gotten to know the project and the Pixie team better in recent months, we have concluded that Pixie's capabilities are a great match for achieving our goals beyond just utilizing their Stirling component.

We now use them for more than just collecting data from eBPF probes through their Stirling module. We will leverage several of their capabilities: parsing HTTP traffic, their logic for augmenting HTTP traffic with Kubernetes metadata as well as the control plane for monitoring and configuring the Pixie data collectors and for receiving telemetry. As such, we are now pivoting to developing a plugin with the Pixie sensor that exports OpenTelemetry to the Trinidad cloud for analysis and retention.

Likewise, we are excited to give Pixie users the opportunity to discover Trinidad as an available integration.

The other reason we are moving forward with this decision is due to our partnership with the Pixie team. They are excellent to work with, and we consistently provide opportunities to collaborate with them. This is a prime example of the type of open-source partnership that can happen when technical goals and shared values align. In addition, our collaboration makes both of our solutions more robust, creating opportunities for other organizations to benefit from the freedom of choice of open-source software.

We are grateful for our continued collaboration with the Pixie team on our journey and excited for the continued evolution of our partnership. Stay tuned for some exciting announcements later this year!