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Ensure that the kubelet.conf file ownership is set to root:root.

Risk Level

Low

Address

Security

Compliance Standards

  • APRA CPS 234 (Australia)
  • BSI C5 (Germany)
  • Brazil LGPD
  • CCPA / CPRA (California)
  • CIS Critical Security Controls v8
  • CIS EKS
  • CMMC 2.0
  • CSA Cloud Controls Matrix v4
  • DPDPA
  • Digital Operational Resilience Act (EU)
  • Essential 8
  • ISO/IEC 27017
  • ISO/IEC 27018
  • ISO/IEC 27701
  • KSA PDPL
  • MAS Technology Risk Management (Singapore)
  • MITRE ATT&CK (Cloud)
  • NIS2 Directive
  • NIST SP 800-171
  • NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500
  • SWIFT Customer Security Controls Framework
  • Sarbanes-Oxley IT General Controls
  • UK NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework

Triage and Remediation

Remediation

Manual Steps

  1. On every worker node, confirm the kubelet kubeconfig file exists and check its current ownership:
  2. On every worker node, change ownership of the kubelet kubeconfig file to root:root:
  3. (Optional, if permissions also need tightening) On every worker node, restrict permissions to read/write for root only:
  4. On every worker node, verify the ownership is now correct:
    The output must be:
kubectl cannot modify file ownership on worker node filesystems, including /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf. This finding must be fixed directly on each worker node via host-level commands; see the Manual Steps section for the exact steps and verification commands.

Additional Reading: