Skip to main content

More Info:

The kubelet client certificate authorities file should be owned by root:root so only privileged users can modify the trust store. Incorrect ownership could allow tampering with client authentication.

Risk Level

Medium

Address

Security

Compliance Standards

  • CIS Kubernetes

Triage and Remediation

Remediation

Manual Steps

  1. On every worker node, identify the kubelet client CA file path (if set explicitly):
    If no --client-ca-file flag is present, use the default path /etc/kubernetes/pki/ca.crt.
  2. On every worker node, set the ownership of the client CA file to root:root (replace the path if you found a different one in step 1):
  3. On every worker node, confirm the ownership is now correct:
    The output must be:
kubectl cannot change file ownership on worker node filesystems, including /etc/kubernetes/pki/ca.crt, because this is a host-level configuration. To remediate this finding, you must run the appropriate chown command directly on every worker node; see the Manual Steps section for the exact commands.
Usage (run on every worker node over SSH):