Preview - Secure your cluster using pod security policies in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

• 04/17/2019
• 15 minutes to read
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To improve the security of your AKS cluster, you can limit what pods can be scheduled. Pods that request resources you don't allow can't run in the AKS cluster. You define this access using pod security policies. This article shows you how to use pod security policies to limit the deployment of pods in AKS.

Before you begin

This article assumes that you have an existing AKS cluster. If you need an AKS cluster, see the AKS quickstart using the Azure CLI or using the Azure portal.

You need the Azure CLI version 2.0.61 or later installed and configured. Run az --version to find the version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.

Install aks-preview CLI extension

To use pod security policies, you need the aks-preview CLI extension version 0.4.1 or higher. Install the aks-preview Azure CLI extension using the az extension add command, then check for any available updates using the az extension update command:

# Install the aks-preview extension
az extension add --name aks-preview

# Update the extension to make sure you have the latest version installed
az extension update --name aks-preview

Register pod security policy feature provider

To create or update an AKS cluster to use pod security policies, first enable a feature flag on your subscription. To register the PodSecurityPolicyPreview feature flag, use the az feature register command as shown in the following example:

az feature register --name PodSecurityPolicyPreview --namespace Microsoft.ContainerService

It takes a few minutes for the status to show Registered. You can check on the registration status using the az feature list command:

az feature list -o table --query "[?contains(name, 'Microsoft.ContainerService/PodSecurityPolicyPreview')].{Name:name,State:properties.state}"

When ready, refresh the registration of the Microsoft.ContainerService resource provider using the az provider register command:

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.ContainerService

Overview of pod security policies

In a Kubernetes cluster, an admission controller is used to intercept requests to the API server when a resource is to be created. The admission controller can then validate the resource request against a set of rules, or mutate the resource to change deployment parameters.

PodSecurityPolicy is an admission controller that validates a pod specification meets your defined requirements. These requirements may limit the use of privileged containers, access to certain types of storage, or the user or group the container can run as. When you try to deploy a resource where the pod specifications don't meet the requirements outlined in the pod security policy, the request is denied. This ability to control what pods can be scheduled in the AKS cluster prevents some possible security vulnerabilities or privilege escalations.

When you enable pod security policy in an AKS cluster, some default policies are applied. These default policies provide an out-of-the-box experience to define what pods can be scheduled. However, cluster users may run into problems deploying pods until you define your own policies. The recommended approach is to:

• Create an AKS cluster
• Define your own pod security policies
• Enable the pod security policy feature

To show how the default policies limit pod deployments, in this article we first enable the pod security policies feature, then create a custom policy.

Enable pod security policy on an AKS cluster

You can enable or disable pod security policy using the az aks update command. The following example enables pod security policy on the cluster name myAKSCluster in the resource group named myResourceGroup.

az aks update \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name myAKSCluster \
    --enable-pod-security-policy

Default AKS policies

When you enable pod security policy, AKS creates one default policy named privileged. Don't edit or remove the default policy. Instead, create your own policies that define the settings you want to control. Let's first look at what these default policies are how they impact pod deployments.

To view the policies available, use the kubectl get psp command, as shown in the following example

$ kubectl get psp

NAME         PRIV    CAPS   SELINUX    RUNASUSER          FSGROUP     SUPGROUP    READONLYROOTFS   VOLUMES
privileged   true    *      RunAsAny   RunAsAny           RunAsAny    RunAsAny    false            *     configMap,emptyDir,projected,secret,downwardAPI,persistentVolumeClaim

The privileged pod security policy is applied to any authenticated user in the AKS cluster. This assignment is controlled by ClusterRoles and ClusterRoleBindings. Use the kubectl get clusterrolebindings command and search for the default:privileged: binding:

kubectl get clusterrolebindings default:privileged -o yaml

As shown in the following condensed output, the psp:restricted ClusterRole is assigned to any system:authenticated users. This ability provides a basic level of restrictions without your own policies being defined.

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  [...]
  name: default:privileged
  [...]
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: psp:privileged
subjects:
- apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Group
  name: system:authenticated

It's important to understand how these default policies interact with user requests to schedule pods before you start to create your own pod security policies. In the next few sections, let's schedule some pods to see these default policies in action.

Create a test user in an AKS cluster

By default, when you use the az aks get-credentials command, the admin credentials for the AKS cluster are added to your kubectl config. The admin user bypasses the enforcement of pod security policies. If you use Azure Active Directory integration for your AKS clusters, you could sign in with the credentials of a non-admin user to see the enforcement of policies in action. In this article, let's create a test user account in the AKS cluster that you can use.

Create a sample namespace named psp-aks for test resources using the kubectl create namespace command. Then, create a service account named nonadmin-user using the kubectl create serviceaccount command:

kubectl create namespace psp-aks
kubectl create serviceaccount --namespace psp-aks nonadmin-user

Next, create a RoleBinding for the nonadmin-user to perform basic actions in the namespace using the kubectl create rolebinding command:

kubectl create rolebinding \
    --namespace psp-aks \
    psp-aks-editor \
    --clusterrole=edit \
    --serviceaccount=psp-aks:nonadmin-user

Create alias commands for admin and non-admin user

To highlight the difference between the regular admin user when using kubectl and the non-admin user created in the previous steps, create two command-line aliases:

• The kubectl-admin alias is for the regular admin user, and is scoped to the psp-aks namespace.
• The kubectl-nonadminuser alias is for the nonadmin-user created in the previous step, and is scoped to the psp-aks namespace.

Create these two aliases as shown in the following commands:

alias kubectl-admin='kubectl --namespace psp-aks'
alias kubectl-nonadminuser='kubectl --as=system:serviceaccount:psp-aks:nonadmin-user --namespace psp-aks'

Test the creation of a privileged pod

Let's first test what happens when you schedule a pod with the security context of privileged: true. This security context escalates the pod's privileges. In the previous section that showed the default AKS pod security policies, the restricted policy should deny this request.

Create a file named nginx-privileged.yaml and paste the following YAML manifest:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: nginx-privileged
spec:
  containers:
    - name: nginx-privileged
      image: nginx:1.14.2
      securityContext:
        privileged: true

Create the pod using the kubectl apply command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl-nonadminuser apply -f nginx-privileged.yaml

The pod fails to be scheduled, as shown in the following example output:

$ kubectl-nonadminuser apply -f nginx-privileged.yaml

Error from server (Forbidden): error when creating "nginx-privileged.yaml": pods "nginx-privileged" is forbidden: unable to validate against any pod security policy: [spec.containers[0].securityContext.privileged: Invalid value: true: Privileged containers are not allowed]

The pod doesn't reach the scheduling stage, so there are no resources to delete before you move on.

Test creation of an unprivileged pod

In the previous example, the pod specification requested privileged escalation. This request is denied by the default restricted pod security policy, so the pod fails to be scheduled. Let's try now running that same NGINX pod without the privilege escalation request.

Create a file named nginx-unprivileged.yaml and paste the following YAML manifest:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: nginx-unprivileged
spec:
  containers:
    - name: nginx-unprivileged
      image: nginx:1.14.2

Create the pod using the kubectl apply command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl-nonadminuser apply -f nginx-unprivileged.yaml

The Kubernetes scheduler accepts the pod request. However, if you look at the status of the pod using kubectl get pods, there's an error:

$ kubectl-nonadminuser get pods

NAME                 READY   STATUS                       RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-unprivileged   0/1     CreateContainerConfigError   0          26s

Use the kubectl describe pod command to look at the events for the pod. The following condensed example shows the container and image require root permissions, even though we didn't request them:

$ kubectl-nonadminuser describe pod nginx-unprivileged

Name:               nginx-unprivileged
Namespace:          psp-aks
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               aks-agentpool-34777077-0/10.240.0.4
Start Time:         Thu, 28 Mar 2019 22:05:04 +0000
[...]
Events:
  Type     Reason     Age                     From                               Message
  ----     ------     ----                    ----                               -------
  Normal   Scheduled  7m14s                   default-scheduler                  Successfully assigned psp-aks/nginx-unprivileged to aks-agentpool-34777077-0
  Warning  Failed     5m2s (x12 over 7m13s)   kubelet, aks-agentpool-34777077-0  Error: container has runAsNonRoot and image will run as root
  Normal   Pulled     2m10s (x25 over 7m13s)  kubelet, aks-agentpool-34777077-0  Container image "nginx:1.14.2" already present on machine

Even though we didn't request any privileged access, the container image for NGINX needs to create a binding for port 80. To bind ports 1024 and below, the root user is required. When the pod tries to start, the restricted pod security policy denies this request.

This example shows that the default pod security policies created by AKS are in effect and restrict the actions a user can perform. It's important to understand the behavior of these default policies, as you may not expect a basic NGINX pod to be denied.

Before you move on to the next step, delete this test pod using the kubectl delete pod command:

kubectl-nonadminuser delete -f nginx-unprivileged.yaml

Test creation of a pod with a specific user context

In the previous example, the container image automatically tried to use root to bind NGINX to port 80. This request was denied by the default restricted pod security policy, so the pod fails to start. Let's try now running that same NGINX pod with a specific user context, such as runAsUser: 2000.

Create a file named nginx-unprivileged-nonroot.yaml and paste the following YAML manifest:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: nginx-unprivileged-nonroot
spec:
  containers:
    - name: nginx-unprivileged
      image: nginx:1.14.2
      securityContext:
        runAsUser: 2000

Create the pod using the kubectl apply command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl-nonadminuser apply -f nginx-unprivileged-nonroot.yaml

The Kubernetes scheduler accepts the pod request. However, if you look at the status of the pod using kubectl get pods, there's a different error than the previous example:

$ kubectl-nonadminuser get pods

NAME                         READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-unprivileged-nonroot   0/1     CrashLoopBackOff    1          3s

Use the kubectl describe pod command to look at the events for the pod. The following condensed example shows the pod events:

$ kubectl-nonadminuser describe pods nginx-unprivileged

Name:               nginx-unprivileged
Namespace:          psp-aks
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               aks-agentpool-34777077-0/10.240.0.4
Start Time:         Thu, 28 Mar 2019 22:05:04 +0000
[...]
Events:
  Type     Reason     Age                   From                               Message
  ----     ------     ----                  ----                               -------
  Normal   Scheduled  2m14s                 default-scheduler                  Successfully assigned psp-aks/nginx-unprivileged-nonroot to aks-agentpool-34777077-0
  Normal   Pulled     118s (x3 over 2m13s)  kubelet, aks-agentpool-34777077-0  Container image "nginx:1.14.2" already present on machine
  Normal   Created    118s (x3 over 2m13s)  kubelet, aks-agentpool-34777077-0  Created container
  Normal   Started    118s (x3 over 2m12s)  kubelet, aks-agentpool-34777077-0  Started container
  Warning  BackOff    105s (x5 over 2m11s)  kubelet, aks-agentpool-34777077-0  Back-off restarting failed container

The events indicate that the container was created and started. There's nothing immediately obvious as to why the pod is in a failed state. Let's look at the pod logs using the kubectl logs command:

kubectl-nonadminuser logs nginx-unprivileged-nonroot --previous

The following example log output gives an indication that within the NGINX configuration itself, there's a permissions error when the service tries to start. This error is again caused by needing to bind to port 80. Although the pod specification defined a regular user account, this user account isn't sufficient in the OS-level for the NGINX service to start and bind to the restricted port.

$ kubectl-nonadminuser logs nginx-unprivileged-nonroot --previous

2019/03/28 22:38:29 [warn] 1#1: the "user" directive makes sense only if the master process runs with super-user privileges, ignored in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:2
nginx: [warn] the "user" directive makes sense only if the master process runs with super-user privileges, ignored in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:2
2019/03/28 22:38:29 [emerg] 1#1: mkdir() "/var/cache/nginx/client_temp" failed (13: Permission denied)
nginx: [emerg] mkdir() "/var/cache/nginx/client_temp" failed (13: Permission denied)

Again, it's important to understand the behavior of the default pod security policies. This error was a little harder to track down, and again, you may not expect a basic NGINX pod to be denied.

Before you move on to the next step, delete this test pod using the kubectl delete pod command:

kubectl-nonadminuser delete -f nginx-unprivileged-nonroot.yaml

Create a custom pod security policy

Now that you've seen the behavior of the default pod security policies, let's provide a way for the nonadmin-user to successfully schedule pods.

Let's create a policy to reject pods that request privileged access. Other options, such as runAsUser or allowed volumes, aren't explicitly restricted. This type of policy denies a request for privileged access, but otherwise lets the cluster run the requested pods.

Create a file named psp-deny-privileged.yaml and paste the following YAML manifest:

apiVersion: policy/v1beta1
kind: PodSecurityPolicy
metadata:
  name: psp-deny-privileged
spec:
  privileged: false
  seLinux:
    rule: RunAsAny
  supplementalGroups:
    rule: RunAsAny
  runAsUser:
    rule: RunAsAny
  fsGroup:
    rule: RunAsAny
  volumes:
  - '*'

Create the policy using the kubectl apply command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl apply -f psp-deny-privileged.yaml

To view the policies available, use the kubectl get psp command, as shown in the following example. Compare the psp-deny-privileged policy with the default restricted policy that was enforced in the previous examples to create a pod. Only the use of PRIV escalation is denied by your policy. There are no restrictions on the user or group for the psp-deny-privileged policy.

$ kubectl get psp

NAME                  PRIV    CAPS   SELINUX    RUNASUSER          FSGROUP     SUPGROUP    READONLYROOTFS   VOLUMES
privileged            true    *      RunAsAny   RunAsAny           RunAsAny    RunAsAny    false            *
psp-deny-privileged   false          RunAsAny   RunAsAny           RunAsAny    RunAsAny    false            *          configMap,emptyDir,projected,secret,downwardAPI,persistentVolumeClaim

Allow user account to use the custom pod security policy

In the previous step, you created a pod security policy to reject pods that request privileged access. To allow the policy to be used, you create a Role or a ClusterRole. Then, you associate one of these roles using a RoleBinding or ClusterRoleBinding.

For this example, create a ClusterRole that allows you to use the psp-deny-privileged policy created in the previous step. Create a file named psp-deny-privileged-clusterrole.yaml and paste the following YAML manifest:

kind: ClusterRole
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: psp-deny-privileged-clusterrole
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - extensions
  resources:
  - podsecuritypolicies
  resourceNames:
  - psp-deny-privileged
  verbs:
  - use

Create the ClusterRole using the kubectl apply command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl apply -f psp-deny-privileged-clusterrole.yaml

Now create a ClusterRoleBinding to use the ClusterRole created in the previous step. Create a file named psp-deny-privileged-clusterrolebinding.yaml and paste the following YAML manifest:

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: psp-deny-privileged-clusterrolebinding
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: psp-deny-privileged-clusterrole
subjects:
- apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Group
  name: system:serviceaccounts

Create a ClusterRoleBinding using the kubectl apply command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl apply -f psp-deny-privileged-clusterrolebinding.yaml

Test the creation of an unprivileged pod again

With your custom pod security policy applied and a binding for the user account to use the policy, let's try to create an unprivileged pod again. Use the same nginx-privileged.yaml manifest to create the pod using the kubectl apply command:

kubectl-nonadminuser apply -f nginx-unprivileged.yaml

The pod is successfully scheduled. When you check the status of the pod using the kubectl get pods command, the pod is Running:

$ kubectl-nonadminuser get pods

NAME                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-unprivileged   1/1     Running   0          7m14s

This example shows how you can create custom pod security policies to define access to the AKS cluster for different users or groups. The default AKS policies provide tight controls on what pods can run, so create your own custom policies to then correctly define the restrictions you need.

Delete the NGINX unprivileged pod using the kubectl delete command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl-nonadminuser delete -f nginx-unprivileged.yaml

Clean up resources

To disable pod security policy, use the az aks update command again. The following example disables pod security policy on the cluster name myAKSCluster in the resource group named myResourceGroup:

az aks update \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name myAKSCluster \
    --disable-pod-security-policy

Next, delete the ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding:

kubectl delete -f psp-deny-privileged-clusterrolebinding.yaml
kubectl delete -f psp-deny-privileged-clusterrole.yaml

Delete the security policy using kubectl delete command and specify the name of your YAML manifest:

kubectl delete -f psp-deny-privileged.yaml

Finally, delete the psp-aks namespace:

kubectl delete namespace psp-aks

Next steps

This article showed you how to create a pod security policy to prevent the use of privileged access. There are lots of features that a policy can enforce, such as type of volume or the RunAs user. For more information on the available options, see the Kubernetes pod security policy reference docs.

For more information about limiting pod network traffic, see Secure traffic between pods using network policies in AKS.