Often they are not exploitable but it's easier to pay chainguard to have a constant zero on our vuln scanner than to deal with distroless builds ourselves.
The GPU images are indeed very expensive though.
Also it's safer from supply chain attacks. Malware inserted via compromised docker hub tokens is a growing threat.
> Currently there is no cost to contributors or users for Iron Bank. It is a service currently funded by the US Department of Defense.
You can poke around for their public Dockerfile's to build yourself at https://repo1.dso.mil/explore (for example: https://repo1.dso.mil/dsop/opensource/debian/debian12.x/debi...) but to do much useful you'll need an account.
Another organization in Platform One, Big Bang uses IronBank containers to implement a reference DevSecOps CI/CD architecture; I mention them because they maintain a mirror at https://github.com/DoD-Platform-One/bigbang
I have no idea who would win in a fight between people with literal guns and IBM's legal team <https://repo1.dso.mil/big-bang/product/packages/vault/-/blob...> vs <https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/v1.20.2/LICENSE>. I guess to their credit, they do say at the top "licensing is complicated" but then go on to cite the old actual open source license that no longer applies https://github.com/DoD-Platform-One/bigbang/blob/3.5.1/docs/...
My experience has been that the cost of “patching” is often bugs and instability, having gained nothing security-wise.