# Authentication and authorization *And first, a little refresher!* - Authentication = verifying the identity of a person On a UNIX system, we can authenticate with login+password, SSH keys ... - Authorization = listing what they are allowed to do On a UNIX system, this can include file permissions, sudoer entries ... - Sometimes abbreviated as "authn" and "authz" - In good modular systems, these things are decoupled (so we can e.g. change a password or SSH key without having to reset access rights) --- ## Authentication in Kubernetes - When the API server receives a request, it tries to authenticate it (it examines headers, certificates... anything available) - Many authentication methods are available and can be used simultaneously (we will see them on the next slide) - It's the job of the authentication method to produce: - the user name - the user ID - a list of groups - The API server doesn't interpret these; that'll be the job of *authorizers* --- ## Authentication methods - TLS client certificates (that's what we've been doing with `kubectl` so far) - Bearer tokens (a secret token in the HTTP headers of the request) - [HTTP basic auth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_access_authentication) (carrying user and password in an HTTP header) - Authentication proxy (sitting in front of the API and setting trusted headers) --- ## Anonymous requests - If any authentication method *rejects* a request, it's denied (`401 Unauthorized` HTTP code) - If a request is neither rejected nor accepted by anyone, it's anonymous - the user name is `system:anonymous` - the list of groups is `[system:unauthenticated]` - By default, the anonymous user can't do anything (that's what you get if you just `curl` the Kubernetes API) --- ## Authentication with TLS certificates - This is enabled in most Kubernetes deployments - The user name is derived from the `CN` in the client certificates - The groups are derived from the `O` fields in the client certificate - From the point of view of the Kubernetes API, users do not exist (i.e. they are not stored in etcd or anywhere else) - Users can be created (and added to groups) independently of the API - The Kubernetes API can be set up to use your custom CA to validate client certs --- class: extra-details ## Viewing our admin certificate - Let's inspect the certificate we've been using all this time! .exercise[ - This command will show the `CN` and `O` fields for our certificate: ```bash kubectl config view \ --raw \ -o json \ | jq -r .users[0].user[\"client-certificate-data\"] \ | openssl base64 -d -A \ | openssl x509 -text \ | grep Subject: ``` ] Let's break down that command together! 😅 --- class: extra-details ## Breaking down the command - `kubectl config view` shows the Kubernetes user configuration - `--raw` includes certificate information (which shows as REDACTED otherwise) - `-o json` outputs the information in JSON format - `| jq ...` extracts the field with the user certificate (in base64) - `| openssl base64 -d -A` decodes the base64 format (now we have a PEM file) - `| openssl x509 -text` parses the certificate and outputs it as plain text - `| grep Subject:` shows us the line that interests us → We are user `kubernetes-admin`, in group `system:masters`. (We will see later how and why this gives us the permissions that we have.) --- ## User certificates in practice - The Kubernetes API server does not support certificate revocation (see issue [#18982](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/18982)) - As a result, we don't have an easy way to terminate someone's access (if their key is compromised, or they leave the organization) - Option 1: re-create a new CA and re-issue everyone's certificates
→ Maybe OK if we only have a few users; no way otherwise - Option 2: don't use groups; grant permissions to individual users
→ Inconvenient if we have many users and teams; error-prone - Option 3: issue short-lived certificates (e.g. 24 hours) and renew them often
→ This can be facilitated by e.g. Vault or by the Kubernetes CSR API --- ## Authentication with tokens - Tokens are passed as HTTP headers: `Authorization: Bearer and-then-here-comes-the-token` - Tokens can be validated through a number of different methods: - static tokens hard-coded in a file on the API server - [bootstrap tokens](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/bootstrap-tokens/) (special case to create a cluster or join nodes) - [OpenID Connect tokens](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/authentication/#openid-connect-tokens) (to delegate authentication to compatible OAuth2 providers) - service accounts (these deserve more details, coming right up!) --- ## Service accounts - A service account is a user that exists in the Kubernetes API (it is visible with e.g. `kubectl get serviceaccounts`) - Service accounts can therefore be created / updated dynamically (they don't require hand-editing a file and restarting the API server) - A service account is associated with a set of secrets (the kind that you can view with `kubectl get secrets`) - Service accounts are generally used to grant permissions to applications, services... (as opposed to humans) --- class: extra-details ## Token authentication in practice - We are going to list existing service accounts - Then we will extract the token for a given service account - And we will use that token to authenticate with the API --- class: extra-details ## Listing service accounts .exercise[ - The resource name is `serviceaccount` or `sa` for short: ```bash kubectl get sa ``` ] There should be just one service account in the default namespace: `default`. --- class: extra-details ## Finding the secret .exercise[ - List the secrets for the `default` service account: ```bash kubectl get sa default -o yaml SECRET=$(kubectl get sa default -o json | jq -r .secrets[0].name) ``` ] It should be named `default-token-XXXXX`. --- class: extra-details ## Extracting the token - The token is stored in the secret, wrapped with base64 encoding .exercise[ - View the secret: ```bash kubectl get secret $SECRET -o yaml ``` - Extract the token and decode it: ```bash TOKEN=$(kubectl get secret $SECRET -o json \ | jq -r .data.token | openssl base64 -d -A) ``` ] --- class: extra-details ## Using the token - Let's send a request to the API, without and with the token .exercise[ - Find the ClusterIP for the `kubernetes` service: ```bash kubectl get svc kubernetes API=$(kubectl get svc kubernetes -o json | jq -r .spec.clusterIP) ``` - Connect without the token: ```bash curl -k https://$API ``` - Connect with the token: ```bash curl -k -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" https://$API ``` ] --- class: extra-details ## Results - In both cases, we will get a "Forbidden" error - Without authentication, the user is `system:anonymous` - With authentication, it is shown as `system:serviceaccount:default:default` - The API "sees" us as a different user - But neither user has any rights, so we can't do nothin' - Let's change that! --- ## Authorization in Kubernetes - There are multiple ways to grant permissions in Kubernetes, called [authorizers](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/authorization/#authorization-modules): - [Node Authorization](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/node/) (used internally by kubelet; we can ignore it) - [Attribute-based access control](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/abac/) (powerful but complex and static; ignore it too) - [Webhook](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/webhook/) (each API request is submitted to an external service for approval) - [Role-based access control](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/rbac/) (associates permissions to users dynamically) - The one we want is the last one, generally abbreviated as RBAC --- ## Role-based access control - RBAC allows to specify fine-grained permissions - Permissions are expressed as *rules* - A rule is a combination of: - [verbs](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/authorization/#determine-the-request-verb) like create, get, list, update, delete... - resources (as in "API resource," like pods, nodes, services...) - resource names (to specify e.g. one specific pod instead of all pods) - in some case, [subresources](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/rbac/#referring-to-resources) (e.g. logs are subresources of pods) --- ## From rules to roles to rolebindings - A *role* is an API object containing a list of *rules* Example: role "external-load-balancer-configurator" can: - [list, get] resources [endpoints, services, pods] - [update] resources [services] - A *rolebinding* associates a role with a user Example: rolebinding "external-load-balancer-configurator": - associates user "external-load-balancer-configurator" - with role "external-load-balancer-configurator" - Yes, there can be users, roles, and rolebindings with the same name - It's a good idea for 1-1-1 bindings; not so much for 1-N ones --- ## Cluster-scope permissions - API resources Role and RoleBinding are for objects within a namespace - We can also define API resources ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding - These are a superset, allowing us to: - specify actions on cluster-wide objects (like nodes) - operate across all namespaces - We can create Role and RoleBinding resources within a namespace - ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding resources are global --- ## Pods and service accounts - A pod can be associated with a service account - by default, it is associated with the `default` service account - as we saw earlier, this service account has no permissions anyway - The associated token is exposed to the pod's filesystem (in `/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token`) - Standard Kubernetes tooling (like `kubectl`) will look for it there - So Kubernetes tools running in a pod will automatically use the service account --- ## In practice - We are going to create a service account - We will use a default cluster role (`view`) - We will bind together this role and this service account - Then we will run a pod using that service account - In this pod, we will install `kubectl` and check our permissions --- ## Creating a service account - We will call the new service account `viewer` (note that nothing prevents us from calling it `view`, like the role) .exercise[ - Create the new service account: ```bash kubectl create serviceaccount viewer ``` - List service accounts now: ```bash kubectl get serviceaccounts ``` ] --- ## Binding a role to the service account - Binding a role = creating a *rolebinding* object - We will call that object `viewercanview` (but again, we could call it `view`) .exercise[ - Create the new role binding: ```bash kubectl create rolebinding viewercanview \ --clusterrole=view \ --serviceaccount=default:viewer ``` ] It's important to note a couple of details in these flags... --- ## Roles vs Cluster Roles - We used `--clusterrole=view` - What would have happened if we had used `--role=view`? - we would have bound the role `view` from the local namespace
(instead of the cluster role `view`) - the command would have worked fine (no error) - but later, our API requests would have been denied - This is a deliberate design decision (we can reference roles that don't exist, and create/update them later) --- ## Users vs Service Accounts - We used `--serviceaccount=default:viewer` - What would have happened if we had used `--user=default:viewer`? - we would have bound the role to a user instead of a service account - again, the command would have worked fine (no error) - ...but our API requests would have been denied later - What's about the `default:` prefix? - that's the namespace of the service account - yes, it could be inferred from context, but... `kubectl` requires it --- ## Testing - We will run an `alpine` pod and install `kubectl` there .exercise[ - Run a one-time pod: ```bash kubectl run eyepod --rm -ti --restart=Never \ --serviceaccount=viewer \ --image alpine ``` - Install `curl`, then use it to install `kubectl`: ```bash apk add --no-cache curl URLBASE=https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release KUBEVER=$(curl -s $URLBASE/stable.txt) curl -LO $URLBASE/$KUBEVER/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl chmod +x kubectl ``` ] --- ## Running `kubectl` in the pod - We'll try to use our `view` permissions, then to create an object .exercise[ - Check that we can, indeed, view things: ```bash ./kubectl get all ``` - But that we can't create things: ``` ./kubectl create deployment testrbac --image=nginx ``` - Exit the container with `exit` or `^D` ] --- ## Testing directly with `kubectl` - We can also check for permission with `kubectl auth can-i`: ```bash kubectl auth can-i list nodes kubectl auth can-i create pods kubectl auth can-i get pod/name-of-pod kubectl auth can-i get /url-fragment-of-api-request/ kubectl auth can-i '*' services ``` - And we can check permissions on behalf of other users: ```bash kubectl auth can-i list nodes \ --as some-user kubectl auth can-i list nodes \ --as system:serviceaccount:: ``` --- class: extra-details ## Where does this `view` role come from? - Kubernetes defines a number of ClusterRoles intended to be bound to users - `cluster-admin` can do *everything* (think `root` on UNIX) - `admin` can do *almost everything* (except e.g. changing resource quotas and limits) - `edit` is similar to `admin`, but cannot view or edit permissions - `view` has read-only access to most resources, except permissions and secrets *In many situations, these roles will be all you need.* *You can also customize them!* --- class: extra-details ## Customizing the default roles - If you need to *add* permissions to these default roles (or others),
you can do it through the [ClusterRole Aggregation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/rbac/#aggregated-clusterroles) mechanism - This happens by creating a ClusterRole with the following labels: ```yaml metadata: labels: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/aggregate-to-admin: "true" rbac.authorization.k8s.io/aggregate-to-edit: "true" rbac.authorization.k8s.io/aggregate-to-view: "true" ``` - This ClusterRole permissions will be added to `admin`/`edit`/`view` respectively - This is particulary useful when using CustomResourceDefinitions (since Kubernetes cannot guess which resources are sensitive and which ones aren't) --- class: extra-details ## Where do our permissions come from? - When interacting with the Kubernetes API, we are using a client certificate - We saw previously that this client certificate contained: `CN=kubernetes-admin` and `O=system:masters` - Let's look for these in existing ClusterRoleBindings: ```bash kubectl get clusterrolebindings -o yaml | grep -e kubernetes-admin -e system:masters ``` (`system:masters` should show up, but not `kubernetes-admin`.) - Where does this match come from? --- class: extra-details ## The `system:masters` group - If we eyeball the output of `kubectl get clusterrolebindings -o yaml`, we'll find out! - It is in the `cluster-admin` binding: ```bash kubectl describe clusterrolebinding cluster-admin ``` - This binding associates `system:masters` with the cluster role `cluster-admin` - And the `cluster-admin` is, basically, `root`: ```bash kubectl describe clusterrole cluster-admin ``` --- class: extra-details ## Figuring out who can do what - For auditing purposes, sometimes we want to know who can perform an action - There are a few tools to help us with that - [kubectl-who-can](https://github.com/aquasecurity/kubectl-who-can) by Aqua Security - [Review Access (aka Rakkess)](https://github.com/corneliusweig/rakkess) - Both are available as standalone programs, or as plugins for `kubectl` (`kubectl` plugins can be installed and managed with `krew`)