Using socat to backdoor via kubernetes

Sometimes when you’re developing or debugging locally you need access to resources that are exposed to your cluster.

Typically, most organisations use VPN’s to enable you to access these resources, but there’s a much easier way.

Socat.

The alpine/socat image is perfect for enabling backdoor access to private or internal services that are available to your cluster without having to set up and manage VPN’s.

How it works is pretty simple. We run a socat pod exposing a service that’s viewable by the pod but not by us.