cis-ocp-v160-5-1-6

name	cis-ocp-v160-5.1.6
description	Ensure that Service Account Tokens are only mounted where necessary (Manual)
category	cis-openshift
version	1.6.0
author	cyberstrike-official
tags	["cis","openshift","kubernetes","redhat","policies","rbac","service-accounts"]
cis_id	5.1.6
cis_benchmark	CIS Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Benchmark v1.6.0
tech_stack	["kubernetes","openshift","redhat"]
cwe_ids	[]
chains_with	[]
prerequisites	[]
severity_boost	{}

CIS Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Benchmark v1.6.0 - Control 5.1.6

Profile Applicability

• Level: 1

Description

Service accounts tokens should not be mounted in pods except where the workload running in the pod explicitly needs to communicate with the API server.

Rationale

Mounting service account tokens inside pods can provide an avenue for privilege escalation attacks where an attacker is able to compromise a single pod in the cluster.

Avoiding mounting these tokens removes this attack avenue.

Impact

Pods mounted without service account tokens will not be able to communicate with the API server, except where the resource is available to unauthenticated principals.

Audit Procedure

Review pod and service account objects in the cluster and ensure automatically mounting the service account token is disabled (automountServiceAccountToken: false), unless the resource explicitly requires this access.

Find all pods that automatically mount service account tokens:

oc get pods -A -o json | jq '.items[] |
select(.spec.automountServiceAccountToken) | .metadata.name'

Find all service accounts that automatically mount service tokens:

oc get serviceaccounts -A -o json | jq '.items[] |
select(.automountServiceAccountToken) | .metadata.name'

Remediation

Modify the definition of pods and service accounts which do not need to mount service account tokens to disable it.

Default Value

By default, all pods get a service account token mounted in them.

References

1. https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/configure-service-account/

CIS Controls

Controls Version	Control	IG 1	IG 2	IG 3
v8	4.8 Uninstall or Disable Unnecessary Services on Enterprise Assets and Software		*	*
v7	13.4 Only Allow Access to Authorized Cloud Storage or Email Providers		*	*

MITRE ATT&CK Mappings