Security

• 1: Overview of Cloud Native Security
• 2: Pod Security Standards
• 3: Pod Security Admission
• 4: Controlling Access to the Kubernetes API

1 - Overview of Cloud Native Security

This overview defines a model for thinking about Kubernetes security in the context of Cloud Native security.

Warning: This container security model provides suggestions, not proven information security policies.

The 4C's of Cloud Native security

You can think about security in layers. The 4C's of Cloud Native security are Cloud, Clusters, Containers, and Code.

Note: This layered approach augments the defense in depth computing approach to security, which is widely regarded as a best practice for securing software systems.

Each layer of the Cloud Native security model builds upon the next outermost layer. The Code layer benefits from strong base (Cloud, Cluster, Container) security layers. You cannot safeguard against poor security standards in the base layers by addressing security at the Code level.

Cloud

In many ways, the Cloud (or co-located servers, or the corporate datacenter) is the trusted computing base of a Kubernetes cluster. If the Cloud layer is vulnerable (or configured in a vulnerable way) then there is no guarantee that the components built on top of this base are secure. Each cloud provider makes security recommendations for running workloads securely in their environment.

Cloud provider security

If you are running a Kubernetes cluster on your own hardware or a different cloud provider, consult your documentation for security best practices. Here are links to some of the popular cloud providers' security documentation:

Infrastructure security

Suggestions for securing your infrastructure in a Kubernetes cluster:

Cluster

There are two areas of concern for securing Kubernetes:

• Securing the cluster components that are configurable
• Securing the applications which run in the cluster

Components of the Cluster

If you want to protect your cluster from accidental or malicious access and adopt good information practices, read and follow the advice about securing your cluster.

Components in the cluster (your application)

Depending on the attack surface of your application, you may want to focus on specific aspects of security. For example: If you are running a service (Service A) that is critical in a chain of other resources and a separate workload (Service B) which is vulnerable to a resource exhaustion attack then the risk of compromising Service A is high if you do not limit the resources of Service B. The following table lists areas of security concerns and recommendations for securing workloads running in Kubernetes:

Container

Container security is outside the scope of this guide. Here are general recommendations and links to explore this topic:

Code

Application code is one of the primary attack surfaces over which you have the most control. While securing application code is outside of the Kubernetes security topic, here are recommendations to protect application code:

Code security

What's next

Learn about related Kubernetes security topics:

• Pod security standards
• Network policies for Pods
• Controlling Access to the Kubernetes API
• Securing your cluster
• Data encryption in transit for the control plane
• Data encryption at rest
• Secrets in Kubernetes
• Runtime class

2 - Pod Security Standards

The Pod Security Standards define three different policies to broadly cover the security spectrum. These policies are cumulative and range from highly-permissive to highly-restrictive. This guide outlines the requirements of each policy.

Profile Details

Privileged

The Privileged policy is purposely-open, and entirely unrestricted. This type of policy is typically aimed at system- and infrastructure-level workloads managed by privileged, trusted users.

The Privileged policy is defined by an absence of restrictions. For allow-by-default enforcement mechanisms (such as gatekeeper), the Privileged policy may be an absence of applied constraints rather than an instantiated profile. In contrast, for a deny-by-default mechanism (such as Pod Security Policy) the Privileged policy should enable all controls (disable all restrictions).

Baseline

The Baseline policy is aimed at ease of adoption for common containerized workloads while preventing known privilege escalations. This policy is targeted at application operators and developers of non-critical applications. The following listed controls should be enforced/disallowed:

Note: In this table, wildcards (*) indicate all elements in a list. For example, spec.containers[*].securityContext refers to the Security Context object for all defined containers. If any of the listed containers fails to meet the requirements, the entire pod will fail validation.

Restricted

The Restricted policy is aimed at enforcing current Pod hardening best practices, at the expense of some compatibility. It is targeted at operators and developers of security-critical applications, as well as lower-trust users. The following listed controls should be enforced/disallowed:

Note: In this table, wildcards (*) indicate all elements in a list. For example, spec.containers[*].securityContext refers to the Security Context object for all defined containers. If any of the listed containers fails to meet the requirements, the entire pod will fail validation.

Policy Instantiation

Decoupling policy definition from policy instantiation allows for a common understanding and consistent language of policies across clusters, independent of the underlying enforcement mechanism.

As mechanisms mature, they will be defined below on a per-policy basis. The methods of enforcement of individual policies are not defined here.

Pod Security Admission Controller

• Privileged namespace
• Baseline namespace
• Restricted namespace

PodSecurityPolicy (Deprecated)

• Privileged
• Baseline
• Restricted

FAQ

Why isn't there a profile between privileged and baseline?

The three profiles defined here have a clear linear progression from most secure (restricted) to least secure (privileged), and cover a broad set of workloads. Privileges required above the baseline policy are typically very application specific, so we do not offer a standard profile in this niche. This is not to say that the privileged profile should always be used in this case, but that policies in this space need to be defined on a case-by-case basis.

SIG Auth may reconsider this position in the future, should a clear need for other profiles arise.

What's the difference between a security profile and a security context?

Security Contexts configure Pods and Containers at runtime. Security contexts are defined as part of the Pod and container specifications in the Pod manifest, and represent parameters to the container runtime.

Security profiles are control plane mechanisms to enforce specific settings in the Security Context, as well as other related parameters outside the Security Context. As of July 2021, Pod Security Policies are deprecated in favor of the built-in Pod Security Admission Controller.

Caution: This section links to third party projects that provide functionality required by Kubernetes. The Kubernetes project authors aren't responsible for these projects. This page follows CNCF website guidelines by listing projects alphabetically. To add a project to this list, read the content guide before submitting a change.

Other alternatives for enforcing security profiles are being developed in the Kubernetes ecosystem, such as:

• OPA Gatekeeper.
• Kubewarden.
• Kyverno.

What profiles should I apply to my Windows Pods?

Windows in Kubernetes has some limitations and differentiators from standard Linux-based workloads. Specifically, many of the Pod SecurityContext fields have no effect on Windows. As such, no standardized Pod Security profiles currently exist.

If you apply the restricted profile for a Windows pod, this may have an impact on the pod at runtime. The restricted profile requires enforcing Linux-specific restrictions (such as seccomp profile, and disallowing privilege escalation). If the kubelet and / or its container runtime ignore these Linux-specific values, then the Windows pod should still work normally within the restricted profile. However, the lack of enforcement means that there is no additional restriction, for Pods that use Windows containers, compared to the baseline profile.

The use of the HostProcess flag to create a HostProcess pod should only be done in alignment with the privileged policy. Creation of a Windows HostProcess pod is blocked under the baseline and restricted policies, so any HostProcess pod should be considered privileged.

What about sandboxed Pods?

There is not currently an API standard that controls whether a Pod is considered sandboxed or not. Sandbox Pods may be identified by the use of a sandboxed runtime (such as gVisor or Kata Containers), but there is no standard definition of what a sandboxed runtime is.

The protections necessary for sandboxed workloads can differ from others. For example, the need to restrict privileged permissions is lessened when the workload is isolated from the underlying kernel. This allows for workloads requiring heightened permissions to still be isolated.

Additionally, the protection of sandboxed workloads is highly dependent on the method of sandboxing. As such, no single recommended profile is recommended for all sandboxed workloads.

3 - Pod Security Admission

The Kubernetes Pod Security Standards define different isolation levels for Pods. These standards let you define how you want to restrict the behavior of pods in a clear, consistent fashion.

As an Alpha feature, Kubernetes offers a built-in Pod Security admission controller, the successor to PodSecurityPolicies. Pod security restrictions are applied at the namespace level when pods are created.

Note: The PodSecurityPolicy API is deprecated and will be removed from Kubernetes in v1.25.

Enabling the Alpha feature

Setting pod security controls by namespace is an alpha feature. You must enable the PodSecurity feature gate in order to use it.

--feature-gates="...,PodSecurity=true"

Pod Security levels

Pod Security admission places requirements on a Pod's Security Context and other related fields according to the three levels defined by the Pod Security Standards: privileged, baseline, and restricted. Refer to the Pod Security Standards page for an in-depth look at those requirements.

Pod Security Admission labels for namespaces

Provided that you have enabled this feature, you can configure namespaces to define the admission control mode you want to use for pod security in each namespace. Kubernetes defines a set of labels that you can set to define which of the predefined Pod Security Standard levels you want to use for a namespace. The label you select defines what action the control plane takes if a potential violation is detected:

A namespace can configure any or all modes, or even set a different level for different modes.

For each mode, there are two labels that determine the policy used:

# The per-mode level label indicates which policy level to apply for the mode.
#
# MODE must be one of `enforce`, `audit`, or `warn`.
# LEVEL must be one of `privileged`, `baseline`, or `restricted`.
pod-security.kubernetes.io/<MODE>: <LEVEL>

# Optional: per-mode version label that can be used to pin the policy to the
# version that shipped with a given Kubernetes minor version (for example v1.22).
#
# MODE must be one of `enforce`, `audit`, or `warn`.
# VERSION must be a valid Kubernetes minor version, or `latest`.
pod-security.kubernetes.io/<MODE>-version: <VERSION>

Check out Enforce Pod Security Standards with Namespace Labels to see example usage.

Workload resources and Pod templates

Pods are often created indirectly, by creating a workload object such as a Deployment or Job. The workload object defines a Pod template and a controller for the workload resource creates Pods based on that template. To help catch violations early, both the audit and warning modes are applied to the workload resources. However, enforce mode is not applied to workload resources, only to the resulting pod objects.

Exemptions

You can define exemptions from pod security enforcement in order allow the creation of pods that would have otherwise been prohibited due to the policy associated with a given namespace. Exemptions can be statically configured in the Admission Controller configuration.

Exemptions must be explicitly enumerated. Requests meeting exemption criteria are ignored by the Admission Controller (all enforce, audit and warn behaviors are skipped). Exemption dimensions include:

• Usernames: requests from users with an exempt authenticated (or impersonated) username are ignored.
• RuntimeClassNames: pods and workload resources specifying an exempt runtime class name are ignored.
• Namespaces: pods and workload resources in an exempt namespace are ignored.

Caution: Most pods are created by a controller in response to a workload resource, meaning that exempting an end user will only exempt them from enforcement when creating pods directly, but not when creating a workload resource. Controller service accounts (such as system:serviceaccount:kube-system:replicaset-controller) should generally not be exempted, as doing so would implicitly exempt any user that can create the corresponding workload resource.

Updates to the following pod fields are exempt from policy checks, meaning that if a pod update request only changes these fields, it will not be denied even if the pod is in violation of the current policy level:

• Any metadata updates except changes to the seccomp or AppArmor annotations:
  • seccomp.security.alpha.kubernetes.io/pod (deprecated)
  • container.seccomp.security.alpha.kubernetes.io/* (deprecated)
  • container.apparmor.security.beta.kubernetes.io/*
• Valid updates to .spec.activeDeadlineSeconds
• Valid updates to .spec.tolerations

What's next

• Pod Security Standards
• Enforcing Pod Security Standards
• Enforce Pod Security Standards by Configuring the Built-in Admission Controller
• Enforce Pod Security Standards with Namespace Labels
• Migrate from PodSecurityPolicy to the Built-In PodSecurity Admission Controller

4 - Controlling Access to the Kubernetes API

This page provides an overview of controlling access to the Kubernetes API.

Users access the Kubernetes API using kubectl, client libraries, or by making REST requests. Both human users and Kubernetes service accounts can be authorized for API access. When a request reaches the API, it goes through several stages, illustrated in the following diagram:

Transport security

In a typical Kubernetes cluster, the API serves on port 443, protected by TLS. The API server presents a certificate. This certificate may be signed using a private certificate authority (CA), or based on a public key infrastructure linked to a generally recognized CA.

If your cluster uses a private certificate authority, you need a copy of that CA certificate configured into your ~/.kube/config on the client, so that you can trust the connection and be confident it was not intercepted.

Your client can present a TLS client certificate at this stage.

Authentication

Once TLS is established, the HTTP request moves to the Authentication step. This is shown as step 1 in the diagram. The cluster creation script or cluster admin configures the API server to run one or more Authenticator modules. Authenticators are described in more detail in Authentication.

The input to the authentication step is the entire HTTP request; however, it typically examines the headers and/or client certificate.

Authentication modules include client certificates, password, and plain tokens, bootstrap tokens, and JSON Web Tokens (used for service accounts).

Multiple authentication modules can be specified, in which case each one is tried in sequence, until one of them succeeds.

If the request cannot be authenticated, it is rejected with HTTP status code 401. Otherwise, the user is authenticated as a specific username, and the user name is available to subsequent steps to use in their decisions. Some authenticators also provide the group memberships of the user, while other authenticators do not.

While Kubernetes uses usernames for access control decisions and in request logging, it does not have a User object nor does it store usernames or other information about users in its API.

Authorization

After the request is authenticated as coming from a specific user, the request must be authorized. This is shown as step 2 in the diagram.

A request must include the username of the requester, the requested action, and the object affected by the action. The request is authorized if an existing policy declares that the user has permissions to complete the requested action.

For example, if Bob has the policy below, then he can read pods only in the namespace projectCaribou:

{
    "apiVersion": "abac.authorization.kubernetes.io/v1beta1",
    "kind": "Policy",
    "spec": {
        "user": "bob",
        "namespace": "projectCaribou",
        "resource": "pods",
        "readonly": true
    }
}

If Bob makes the following request, the request is authorized because he is allowed to read objects in the projectCaribou namespace:

{
  "apiVersion": "authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1",
  "kind": "SubjectAccessReview",
  "spec": {
    "resourceAttributes": {
      "namespace": "projectCaribou",
      "verb": "get",
      "group": "unicorn.example.org",
      "resource": "pods"
    }
  }
}

If Bob makes a request to write (create or update) to the objects in the projectCaribou namespace, his authorization is denied. If Bob makes a request to read (get) objects in a different namespace such as projectFish, then his authorization is denied.

Kubernetes authorization requires that you use common REST attributes to interact with existing organization-wide or cloud-provider-wide access control systems. It is important to use REST formatting because these control systems might interact with other APIs besides the Kubernetes API.

Kubernetes supports multiple authorization modules, such as ABAC mode, RBAC Mode, and Webhook mode. When an administrator creates a cluster, they configure the authorization modules that should be used in the API server. If more than one authorization modules are configured, Kubernetes checks each module, and if any module authorizes the request, then the request can proceed. If all of the modules deny the request, then the request is denied (HTTP status code 403).

To learn more about Kubernetes authorization, including details about creating policies using the supported authorization modules, see Authorization.

Admission control

Admission Control modules are software modules that can modify or reject requests. In addition to the attributes available to Authorization modules, Admission Control modules can access the contents of the object that is being created or modified.

Admission controllers act on requests that create, modify, delete, or connect to (proxy) an object. Admission controllers do not act on requests that merely read objects. When multiple admission controllers are configured, they are called in order.

This is shown as step 3 in the diagram.

Unlike Authentication and Authorization modules, if any admission controller module rejects, then the request is immediately rejected.

In addition to rejecting objects, admission controllers can also set complex defaults for fields.

The available Admission Control modules are described in Admission Controllers.

Once a request passes all admission controllers, it is validated using the validation routines for the corresponding API object, and then written to the object store (shown as step 4).

API server ports and IPs

The previous discussion applies to requests sent to the secure port of the API server (the typical case). The API server can actually serve on 2 ports:

By default, the Kubernetes API server serves HTTP on 2 ports:

1. localhost port:

   • is intended for testing and bootstrap, and for other components of the master node (scheduler, controller-manager) to talk to the API
   • no TLS
   • default is port 8080
   • default IP is localhost, change with --insecure-bind-address flag.
   • request bypasses authentication and authorization modules.
   • request handled by admission control module(s).
   • protected by need to have host access

2. “Secure port”:

   • use whenever possible
   • uses TLS. Set cert with --tls-cert-file and key with --tls-private-key-file flag.
   • default is port 6443, change with --secure-port flag.
   • default IP is first non-localhost network interface, change with --bind-address flag.
   • request handled by authentication and authorization modules.
   • request handled by admission control module(s).
   • authentication and authorization modules run.

What's next

Read more documentation on authentication, authorization and API access control:

• Authenticating
  • Authenticating with Bootstrap Tokens
• Admission Controllers
  • Dynamic Admission Control
• Authorization
  • Role Based Access Control
  • Attribute Based Access Control
  • Node Authorization
  • Webhook Authorization
• Certificate Signing Requests
  • including CSR approval and certificate signing
• Service accounts
  • Developer guide
  • Administration

You can learn about:

• how Pods can use Secrets to obtain API credentials.