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More Info:

Use a different certificate authority for etcd from the one used for Kubernetes.

Risk Level

Low

Address

Security

Compliance Standards

  • CIS Kubernetes

Triage and Remediation

Remediation

Manual Steps

  1. On every etcd node, identify the current etcd static pod manifest and existing certs (control plane node):
  2. On every etcd node, create a dedicated etcd Certificate Authority (change CN/OU as needed) (control plane node):
  3. On every etcd node, issue a new server certificate for etcd from the dedicated etcd CA (control plane node):
  4. On every etcd node, update the etcd static pod manifest to use the dedicated etcd CA and certificates (control plane node; this will restart etcd automatically):
  5. On every etcd node, ensure the new etcd CA is not the same as the Kubernetes CA (visual/manual comparison) (control plane node):
  6. Verification on every etcd node, after kubelet has automatically restarted the etcd pod due to manifest change (control plane node):
kubectl cannot modify the host-level etcd static pod manifest at /etc/kubernetes/manifests/etcd.yaml or the certificate authority files on the etcd nodes. Perform the remediation directly on every etcd (control plane) node as described in the Manual Steps section.

Additional Reading: