| name | cis-gke-v180-5.8.1 |
| description | Ensure authentication using Client Certificates is Disabled (Automated) |
| category | cis-gke |
| version | 1.8.0 |
| author | cyberstrike-official |
| tags | ["cis","gke","kubernetes","gcp","authentication","authorization","client-certificates","rbac","abac","google-groups"] |
| cis_id | 5.8.1 |
| cis_benchmark | CIS Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Benchmark v1.8.0 |
| tech_stack | ["kubernetes","gcp","gke"] |
| cwe_ids | [] |
| chains_with | [] |
| prerequisites | [] |
| severity_boost | {} |
5.8.1 Ensure authentication using Client Certificates is Disabled (Automated)
Profile Applicability
Description
Do not make use of client certificate authentication in GKE, as the credentials cannot be revoked. Instead, use another authentication method like OpenID Connect.
Rationale
With Client Certificate authentication, a client presents a certificate that the API server verifies with the specified Certificate Authority. In GKE, Client Certificates are signed by the cluster root Certificate Authority. When retrieved, the Client Certificate is only base64 encoded and not encrypted.
GKE manages authentication via gcloud for you using the OpenID Connect token method, setting up the Kubernetes configuration, getting an access token, and keeping it up to date. This means Basic Authentication using static passwords and Client Certificate authentication, which both require additional management overhead of key management and rotation, are not necessary and should not be used where possible.
When Client Certificate creation is disabled GKE will not provide a client certificate on cluster creation, however users will still be able to use the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) API to create new client certificates, if they have access to it.
Impact
Users will no longer be able to authenticate with the pre-provisioned x509 certificate. You should configure and use alternate authentication mechanisms, such as OpenID Connect tokens.
Audit
Using Google Cloud Console
- Go to Kubernetes Engine by visiting https://console.cloud.google.com/kubernetes/list.
- From the list of clusters, click on the desired cluster. On the Details pane, make sure 'Client certificate' is set to 'Disabled'.
Using Command line
To check that the client certificate has not been issued, first define 2 variables for Cluster Name and Zone and then run the following command:
gcloud container clusters describe $CLUSTER_NAME --zone $COMPUTE_ZONE --format json | jq '.masterAuth.clientKey'
The output of the above command returns
null
if the client certificate has not been issued for the cluster (Client Certificate authentication is disabled).
Note. Depreciated as of v1.19. For Basic Authentication, Legacy authorization can be edited for standard clusters but cannot be edited in Autopilot clusters.
Remediation
Currently, there is no way to remove a client certificate from an existing cluster. Thus a new cluster must be created.
Using Google Cloud Console
- Go to Kubernetes Engine by visiting https://console.cloud.google.com/kubernetes/list.
