Skip to main content

More Info:

The kubelet kubeconfig file should have permissions of 644 or more restrictive to prevent unauthorized users from reading or modifying kubelet credentials and cluster connection settings.

Risk Level

Medium

Address

Security

Compliance Standards

  • CIS EKS

Triage and Remediation

Remediation

Manual Steps

  1. On every worker node, check the current permissions and ownership of the kubelet kubeconfig file:
  2. On every worker node, set the permissions to 644 (owner read/write, group and others read-only):
  3. (Optional but recommended) On every worker node, ensure the file is owned by root and in the root group:
  4. On every worker node, re-check the permissions to verify the fix:
kubectl cannot change file permissions on node-local paths such as /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf; this must be fixed directly on every worker node’s host OS. Use the steps in the Manual Steps section to adjust the permissions and verify the remediation.
Usage:
  • On each worker node (as root or with sudo):
  • From an admin machine with SSH access to all worker nodes (example with a simple host list):