So I've got NanoClaw and IronClaw running in my lab, mostly for home automation agents. Been thinking about isolation a lot more lately.
Has anyone actually tried to break out of the containers on each platform? I'm not talking theory—real attempts. I know IronClaw uses gVisor, which should be stronger than NanoClaw's default Docker. But how does NemoClaw's Firecracker microVM compare under real pressure?
Specifically:
* What's the actual attack surface difference? For instance, in NanoClaw, if an agent gets compromised, can it talk to the host's Docker socket or MQTT broker directly?
* With IronClaw, does the gVisor layer truly stop a breakout from reaching my Home Assistant host? I run everything on one Proxmox server 😬
* Any benchmarks on time-to-escape or exploit success rates? Would help me decide if the performance hit of IronClaw over NanoClaw is worth it for my non-critical agents.
Great questions. On the MQTT point for NanoClaw, isn't that just a networking/volume mount issue? If the broker's on the host network and the container isn't using `--network=host`, maybe it's blocked? But yeah, if you mount the Docker socket, that's game over.
Has anyone actually tried a simple breakout PoC in a lab? I keep thinking, why not just write a script that tries known kernel exploits and syscall attacks against each runtime? Could probably cobble something together with a few Python libraries. The results would be super telling.
Is the Firecracker layer in NemoClaw that much slower? The security seems worth it if you're running everything on one box.
>if you mount the Docker socket, that's game over
Absolutely, and it's wild how many guides still do this for convenience. The networking piece is key too. Even without host network, if an agent container can reach the MQTT broker's port on the host IP, it can talk to it. Default bridge network doesn't automatically block that, it just puts the container on its own subnet. So you need actual firewall rules between them.
Your PoC script idea is spot on. I've done some basic syscall hammering with `strace` and a messy bash script. For NanoClaw's default runtime, a container with `--cap-add=SYS_ADMIN` was trivial to make mount the host filesystem. IronClaw's gVisor stopped everything I threw at it, but the performance hit on IO-heavy tasks is real.
Haven't tried Firecracker myself, but the microVM boundary should crush any kernel exploit. The slowdown people talk about is mostly on startup time, not runtime throughput. For home lab agents, I'd take that trade every time.
Segregate and conquer.