# Security in Kubernetes

Kubernetes should define a reasonable set of security best practices that allows
processes to be isolated from each other, from the cluster infrastructure, and
which preserves important boundaries between those who manage the cluster, and
those who use the cluster.

While Kubernetes today is not primarily a multi-tenant system, the long term
evolution of Kubernetes will increasingly rely on proper boundaries between
users and administrators. The code running on the cluster must be appropriately
isolated and secured to prevent malicious parties from affecting the entire
cluster.


## High Level Goals

1.  Ensure a clear isolation between the container and the underlying host it
runs on
2.  Limit the ability of the container to negatively impact the infrastructure
or other containers
3.  [Principle of Least Privilege](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege) -
ensure components are only authorized to perform the actions they need, and
limit the scope of a compromise by limiting the capabilities of individual
components
4.  Reduce the number of systems that have to be hardened and secured by
defining clear boundaries between components
5.  Allow users of the system to be cleanly separated from administrators
6.  Allow administrative functions to be delegated to users where necessary
7.  Allow applications to be run on the cluster that have "secret" data (keys,
certs, passwords) which is properly abstracted from "public" data.

## Use cases

### Roles

We define "user" as a unique identity accessing the Kubernetes API server, which
may be a human or an automated process. Human users fall into the following
categories:

1. k8s admin - administers a Kubernetes cluster and has access to the underlying
components of the system
2. k8s project administrator - administrates the security of a small subset of
the cluster
3. k8s developer - launches pods on a Kubernetes cluster and consumes cluster
resources

Automated process users fall into the following categories:

1. k8s container user - a user that processes running inside a container (on the
cluster) can use to access other cluster resources independent of the human
users attached to a project
2. k8s infrastructure user - the user that Kubernetes infrastructure components
use to perform cluster functions with clearly defined roles

### Description of roles

* Developers:
  * write pod specs.
  * making some of their own images, and using some "community" docker images
  * know which pods need to talk to which other pods
  * decide which pods should share files with other pods, and which should not.
  * reason about application level security, such as containing the effects of a
local-file-read exploit in a webserver pod.
  * do not often reason about operating system or organizational security.
  * are not necessarily comfortable reasoning about the security properties of a
system at the level of detail of Linux Capabilities, SELinux, AppArmor, etc.

* Project Admins:
  * allocate identity and roles within a namespace
  * reason about organizational security within a namespace
    * don't give a developer permissions that are not needed for role.
    * protect files on shared storage from unnecessary cross-team access
  * are less focused about application security

* Administrators:
  * are less focused on application security. Focused on operating system
security.
  * protect the node from bad actors in containers, and properly-configured
innocent containers from bad actors in other containers.
  * comfortable reasoning about the security properties of a system at the level
of detail of Linux Capabilities, SELinux, AppArmor, etc.
  * decides who can use which Linux Capabilities, run privileged containers, use
hostPath, etc.
    * e.g. a team that manages Ceph or a mysql server might be trusted to have
raw access to storage devices in some organizations, but teams that develop the
applications at higher layers would not.


## Proposed Design

A pod runs in a *security context* under a *service account* that is defined by
an administrator or project administrator, and the *secrets* a pod has access to
is limited by that *service account*.


1. The API should authenticate and authorize user actions [authn and authz](access.md)
2. All infrastructure components (kubelets, kube-proxies, controllers,
scheduler) should have an infrastructure user that they can authenticate with
and be authorized to perform only the functions they require against the API.
3. Most infrastructure components should use the API as a way of exchanging data
and changing the system, and only the API should have access to the underlying
data store (etcd)
4. When containers run on the cluster and need to talk to other containers or
the API server, they should be identified and authorized clearly as an
autonomous process via a [service account](service_accounts.md)
   1.  If the user who started a long-lived process is removed from access to
the cluster, the process should be able to continue without interruption
   2.  If the user who started processes are removed from the cluster,
administrators may wish to terminate their processes in bulk
   3.  When containers run with a service account, the user that created /
triggered the service account behavior must be associated with the container's
action
5. When container processes run on the cluster, they should run in a
[security context](security_context.md) that isolates those processes via Linux
user security, user namespaces, and permissions.
   1.  Administrators should be able to configure the cluster to automatically
confine all container processes as a non-root, randomly assigned UID
   2.  Administrators should be able to ensure that container processes within
the same namespace are all assigned the same unix user UID
   3.  Administrators should be able to limit which developers and project
administrators have access to higher privilege actions
   4.  Project administrators should be able to run pods within a namespace
under different security contexts, and developers must be able to specify which
of the available security contexts they may use
   5.  Developers should be able to run their own images or images from the
community and expect those images to run correctly
   6.  Developers may need to ensure their images work within higher security
requirements specified by administrators
   7.  When available, Linux kernel user namespaces can be used to ensure 5.2
and 5.4 are met.
   8.  When application developers want to share filesystem data via distributed
filesystems, the Unix user ids on those filesystems must be consistent across
different container processes
6. Developers should be able to define [secrets](secrets.md) that are
automatically added to the containers when pods are run
   1.  Secrets are files injected into the container whose values should not be
displayed within a pod. Examples:
       1. An SSH private key for git cloning remote data
       2. A client certificate for accessing a remote system
       3. A private key and certificate for a web server
       4. A .kubeconfig file with embedded cert / token data for accessing the
Kubernetes master
       5. A .dockercfg file for pulling images from a protected registry
   2.  Developers should be able to define the pod spec so that a secret lands
in a specific location
   3.  Project administrators should be able to limit developers within a
namespace from viewing or modifying secrets (anyone who can launch an arbitrary
pod can view secrets)
   4.  Secrets are generally not copied from one namespace to another when a
developer's application definitions are copied


### Related design discussion

* [Authorization and authentication](access.md)
* [Secret distribution via files](http://pr.k8s.io/2030)
* [Docker secrets](https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/6697)
* [Docker vault](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/10310)
* [Service Accounts:](service_accounts.md)
* [Secret volumes](http://pr.k8s.io/4126)

## Specific Design Points

### TODO: authorization, authentication

### Isolate the data store from the nodes and supporting infrastructure

Access to the central data store (etcd) in Kubernetes allows an attacker to run
arbitrary containers on hosts, to gain access to any protected information
stored in either volumes or in pods (such as access tokens or shared secrets
provided as environment variables), to intercept and redirect traffic from
running services by inserting middlemen, or to simply delete the entire history
of the cluster.

As a general principle, access to the central data store should be restricted to
the components that need full control over the system and which can apply
appropriate authorization and authentication of change requests. In the future,
etcd may offer granular access control, but that granularity will require an
administrator to understand the schema of the data to properly apply security.
An administrator must be able to properly secure Kubernetes at a policy level,
rather than at an implementation level, and schema changes over time should not
risk unintended security leaks.

Both the Kubelet and Kube Proxy need information related to their specific roles -
for the Kubelet, the set of pods it should be running, and for the Proxy, the
set of services and endpoints to load balance. The Kubelet also needs to provide
information about running pods and historical termination data. The access
pattern for both Kubelet and Proxy to load their configuration is an efficient
"wait for changes" request over HTTP. It should be possible to limit the Kubelet
and Proxy to only access the information they need to perform their roles and no
more.

The controller manager for Replication Controllers and other future controllers
act on behalf of a user via delegation to perform automated maintenance on
Kubernetes resources. Their ability to access or modify resource state should be
strictly limited to their intended duties and they should be prevented from
accessing information not pertinent to their role.  For example, a replication
controller needs only to create a copy of a known pod configuration, to
determine the running state of an existing pod, or to delete an existing pod
that it created - it does not need to know the contents or current state of a
pod, nor have access to any data in the pods attached volumes.

The Kubernetes pod scheduler is responsible for reading data from the pod to fit
it onto a node in the cluster. At a minimum, it needs access to view the ID of a
pod (to craft the binding), its current state, any resource information
necessary to identify placement, and other data relevant to concerns like
anti-affinity, zone or region preference, or custom logic. It does not need the
ability to modify pods or see other resources, only to create bindings. It
should not need the ability to delete bindings unless the scheduler takes
control of relocating components on failed hosts (which could be implemented by
a separate component that can delete bindings but not create them). The
scheduler may need read access to user or project-container information to
determine preferential location (underspecified at this time).


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