cis-aks-v170-4-6-2

name	cis-aks-v170-4.6.2
description	Apply Security Context to Your Pods and Containers (Manual)
category	cis-aks
version	1.7.0
author	cyberstrike-official
tags	["cis","aks","kubernetes","azure","security-context","pod-security","hardening"]
cis_id	4.6.2
cis_benchmark	CIS Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Benchmark v1.7.0
tech_stack	["kubernetes","azure","aks"]
cwe_ids	[]
chains_with	[]
prerequisites	[]
severity_boost	{}

4.6.2 Apply Security Context to Your Pods and Containers (Manual)

Profile Applicability

• Level 2

Description

Apply Security Context to Your Pods and Containers.

Rationale

A security context defines the operating system security settings (uid, gid, capabilities, SELinux role, etc.) applied to a container. When designing your containers and pods, make sure that you configure the security context for your pods, containers, and volumes. A security context is a property defined in the deployment yaml. It controls the security parameters that will be assigned to the pod/container/volume. There are two levels of security context: pod level security context, and container level security context.

Impact

If you incorrectly apply security contexts, you may have trouble running the pods.

Audit Procedure

Review the pod definitions in your cluster and verify that you have security contexts defined as appropriate.

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o json | jq '.items[] | select(.spec.securityContext == {} or .spec.securityContext == null) | .metadata.namespace + "/" + .metadata.name'

Remediation

As a best practice we recommend that you scope the binding for privileged pods to service accounts within a particular namespace, e.g. kube-system, and limiting access to that namespace. For all other serviceaccounts/namespaces, we recommend implementing a more restrictive policy that prevents pods from running as privileged or escalating privileges.

Default Value

By default, no security contexts are automatically applied to pods.

References

1. https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/policy/security-context/
2. https://learn.cisecurity.org/benchmarks
3. https://docs.microsoft.com/security/benchmark/azure/security-controls-v2-posture-vulnerability-management#pv-3-establish-secure-configurations-for-compute-resources

CIS Controls

Controls Version	Control	IG 1	IG 2	IG 3
v8	4.6 Securely Manage Enterprise Assets and Software	●	●	●
v7	5 Secure Configuration for Hardware and Software on Mobile Devices, Laptops, Workstations and Servers