CCSP Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Security Practice Question
A DevOps team is building a container image for a cloud-native application. To minimize the attack surface and reduce the number of vulnerabilities, which type of base image should they use?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
A distroless image
Distroless images contain only the application and its runtime dependencies, removing package managers, shells, and other utilities that could be exploited. This reduces the attack surface significantly.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A full distribution image like Ubuntu
Why it's wrong here
Full distributions include many packages and tools that increase the attack surface.
- ✗
An Alpine-based image
Why it's wrong here
Alpine is lightweight but still includes a shell and package manager; distroless is even more minimal.
- ✓
A distroless image
Why this is correct
Distroless images contain only the necessary runtime files, reducing attack surface.
- ✗
The 'latest' tag of any official image
Why it's wrong here
Using 'latest' is discouraged as it may introduce untracked changes and vulnerabilities.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CCSP practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CCSP exam.