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Ensure that Kubernetes PKI certificate files have permissions of 644 or more restrictive.

Risk Level

High

Address

Security

Compliance Standards

  • CIS Kubernetes

Triage and Remediation

Remediation

Manual Steps

  1. On every control plane node, list current certificate permissions for awareness:
  2. Still on each control plane node, restrict permissions on all Kubernetes PKI certificate files:
  3. Ensure the certificate files are owned by root (adjust if needed):
  4. Recheck permissions, ownership, and group to confirm they are at most 644 and root-owned:
  5. On each control plane node, run the benchmark audit command to verify compliance:
kubectl cannot modify file permissions on control plane nodes, so this finding cannot be fixed through Kubernetes API objects. To remediate it, adjust the certificate file permissions directly on every control plane node’s filesystem (for example under /etc/kubernetes/pki) as described in the Manual Steps section.

Additional Reading: