The use of containers is becoming increasingly popular. To simplify their deployment and management on public or private clouds, companies are relying on an orchestrator. And very often, this is Kubernetes (K8s). But this solution is also a prime target for attackers... so it's best to put a few essential measures in place.
The end of October 2019 will go down in the annals of the Kubernetes saga. Bug CVE-2018-1002105 leads to a critical security flaw according to CVSS 9.8. It allows privilege escalation in Kubernetes.
So it's essential to use the right deployment architecture and security best practices for all deployments. The goal? To prevent hackers from injecting malicious code, bringing down the entire cluster environment or stealing sensitive data.
But securing Kubernetes is no easy task. As these deployments are made up of numerous components, securing them requires the involvement of developers and cybersecurity experts capable of analyzing each of these components.
No easy task. Hence the need to deploy best practices.
1. Apply the least privilege
As we saw in a previous article, the fewer users there are, the "easier" it is to control access. This is the principle of "least privilege".
On this subject, the ANSSI (Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d'information) reminds us that "it is usual to restrict the execution environment of a component to the resources strictly necessary for its needs". Using this type of model to prevent widespread access helps to contain an attack should it occur.
2. Use strong authentication
Strong authentication best practices should always be deployed, and authentication is a must for all Kubernetes modules.
3. Multiply authorizations
Kubernetes offers several authorization methods. We recommend using RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) to configure ultra-precise authorization sets to define how a user (or group of users) can interact with each Kubernetes object in a cluster.
Generally speaking, it is essential to secure the production environment and CI/CD pipelines. Security must be built in right from the start, as DevSecOps does.
