← Policy catalog
</> ValidatingAdmissionPolicy · Apache-2.0

Runs in Privileged Mode

ephemeralcontainer-privileged

severityCritical resourceEphemeralContainers productKubernetes bundles2

A privileged ephemeral container disables almost all container isolation and gets full root access to the node devices, kernel interfaces and filesystem, which is a direct path to node and cluster takeover.

Rejects unless

(has(object.spec.os) &&
 has(object.spec.os.name) &&
 object.spec.os.name.lowerAscii() == "windows") ||
!has(object.spec.ephemeralContainers) || object.spec.ephemeralContainers.all(c,
  !has(c.securityContext) ||
  !has(c.securityContext.privileged) ||
  c.securityContext.privileged == false
)

Privileged ephemeral containers are disallowed. All spec.ephemeralContainers[*].securityContext.privileged must be undefined or false.

Remediation

Remove securityContext.privileged from every ephemeral container or set it to false. Field: spec.ephemeralContainers[*].securityContext.privileged.

Applies to

  • pods/ephemeralcontainers · v1 · CREATE, UPDATE

Manifest

apiVersion: admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1
kind: ValidatingAdmissionPolicy
metadata:
  name: ephemeralcontainer-privileged
  annotations:
    kubeapt.io/uuid: "20926aaa-68eb-4741-9d2c-98bfe86a3650"
    security.kubeapt.io/displayName: "Runs in Privileged Mode"
    security.kubeapt.io/description: "A privileged ephemeral container disables almost all container isolation and gets full root access to the node devices, kernel interfaces and filesystem, which is a direct path to node and cluster takeover."
    security.kubeapt.io/resource: "EphemeralContainers"
    security.kubeapt.io/severity: "Critical"
    security.kubeapt.io/remediation: "Remove securityContext.privileged from every ephemeral container or set it to false. Field: spec.ephemeralContainers[*].securityContext.privileged."
    security.kubeapt.io/product: "Kubernetes"
spec:
  failurePolicy: Fail
  matchConstraints:
    resourceRules:
    - apiGroups:
      - ''
      apiVersions:
      - v1
      operations:
      - CREATE
      - UPDATE
      resources:
      - pods/ephemeralcontainers
  validations:
  - expression: |
      (has(object.spec.os) &&
       has(object.spec.os.name) &&
       object.spec.os.name.lowerAscii() == "windows") ||
      !has(object.spec.ephemeralContainers) || object.spec.ephemeralContainers.all(c,
        !has(c.securityContext) ||
        !has(c.securityContext.privileged) ||
        c.securityContext.privileged == false
      )
    message: |
      Privileged ephemeral containers are disallowed. All spec.ephemeralContainers[*].securityContext.privileged must be undefined or false.

Save it as ephemeralcontainer-privileged.yaml — the commands below assume that name.

Validate with kubeapt

Check a workload against this one policy, before anything is installed on a cluster.

$ kubeapt validate -p ./ephemeralcontainer-privileged.yaml -r ./workload.yaml

Or without the file, from the published policy set — -r takes a directory too:

$ kubeapt policies download && kubeapt validate --policy-name ephemeralcontainer-privileged -r ./manifests

Or against every namespace in the cluster your kubeconfig points at:

$ kubeapt validate --policy-name ephemeralcontainer-privileged -A