More Info:
Enable kubelet server certificate rotation.Risk Level
LowAddress
SecurityCompliance Standards
- APRA CPS 234 (Australia)
- BSI C5 (Germany)
- Brazil LGPD
- CCPA / CPRA (California)
- CIS Critical Security Controls v8
- CIS GKE
- 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)
- 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
Remediation
Manual Steps
Manual Steps
-
On every worker node, check how kubelet is configured:
Review the kubelet command line from
psfor any--rotate-kubelet-server-certificateflag. -
If using the kubelet config file at
/var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml, edit it to enable the feature gate (createfeatureGatesif missing):
-
If the kubelet is configured only via executable arguments and not via the config file, on every worker node append the flag to
KUBELET_ARGSin/etc/systemd/system/kubelet.service.d/10-kubelet-args.conf:Or, ifKUBELET_ARGSdoes not exist, add a new line: -
Restart kubelet on every worker node so changes take effect (this restarts the kubelet process):
-
Verify on every worker node that kubelet is running with server certificate rotation enabled:
Confirm either the flag
--rotate-kubelet-server-certificate=trueis present and not set to false, and/or that the kubelet config file in use containsRotateKubeletServerCertificate: trueinfeatureGates.
Using kubectl
Using kubectl
kubectl cannot modify kubelet’s host-level configuration or systemd unit files, so this finding cannot be fixed via the Kubernetes API. To remediate, you must change the kubelet config and/or systemd unit on every worker node (as described in the Manual Steps section) and then restart the kubelet service.
Automation
Automation

