What do container vulnerabilities refer to?

Container vulnerabilities specifically refer to security flaws in the applications running inside containers. Containers are lightweight, standalone, executable packages that include everything needed to run a piece of software, including code, runtime, libraries, and system tools. Despite their advantages, the software within containers can inherit vulnerabilities from various sources, such as:

1. The base images used to create the container. If the base image has known security vulnerabilities, these can be exploited.
2. Misconfigurations within the application or the container itself that could expose sensitive data or allow unauthorized access.

3. Dependencies that may have vulnerabilities which are incorporated into the application running in the container.

Addressing container vulnerabilities is crucial for maintaining robust security in modern software development and deployment environments, especially given the rise in the use of container orchestration platforms. By understanding that these vulnerabilities reside within the applications, security analysts can target their efforts towards securing not just the container technology, but the application workloads themselves.

The other options refer to different kinds of issues that do not encompass the essence of container vulnerabilities directly. Physical flaws pertain to hardware, storage problems relate to how data is managed, and network configuration errors deal with connectivity issues rather than inherent security flaws within the software applications themselves.