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5.2.1 Ensure GKE clusters are not running using the Compute Engine default service account

Information

Create and use minimally privileged Service accounts to run GKE cluster nodes instead of using the Compute Engine default Service account. Unnecessary permissions could be abused in the case of a node compromise.

Rationale:

A GCP service account (as distinct from a Kubernetes ServiceAccount) is an identity that an instance or an application can be used to run GCP API requests. This identity is used to identify virtual machine instances to other Google Cloud Platform services. By default, Kubernetes Engine nodes use the Compute Engine default service account. This account has broad access by default, as defined by access scopes, making it useful to a wide variety of applications on the VM, but it has more permissions than are required to run your Kubernetes Engine cluster.

A minimally privileged service account should be created and used to run the Kubernetes Engine cluster instead of using the Compute Engine default service account, and create separate service accounts for each Kubernetes Workload (See recommendation 5.2.2).

Kubernetes Engine requires, at a minimum, the node service account to have the monitoring.viewer, monitoring.metricWriter, and logging.logWriter roles. Additional roles may need to be added for the nodes to pull images from GCR.

Impact:

Instances are automatically granted the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform scope to allow full access to all Google Cloud APIs. This is so that the IAM permissions of the instance are completely determined by the IAM roles of the Service account. Thus if Kubernetes workloads were using cluster access scopes to perform actions using Google APIs, they may no longer be able to, if not permitted by the permissions of the Service account. To remediate, follow recommendation 5.2.2.

The Service account roles listed here are the minimum required to run the cluster. Additional roles may be required to pull from a private instance of Google Container Registry (GCR).

Solution

Using Google Cloud Console:
To create a minimally privileged service account:

Go to Service Accounts by visiting: https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/serviceaccounts.

Click on CREATE SERVICE ACCOUNT.

Enter Service Account Details.

Click CREATE AND CONTINUE.

Within Service Account permissions add the following roles:

Logs Writer.

Monitoring Metric Writer.

'Monitoring Viewer.

Click CONTINUE.

Grant users access to this service account and create keys as required.

Click DONE.

To create a Node pool to use the Service account:

Go to Kubernetes Engine by visiting: https://console.cloud.google.com/kubernetes/list.

Click on the cluster name within which the Node pool will be launched.

Click on ADD NODE POOL.

Within the Node Pool details, select the Security subheading, and under 'Identity defaults, select the minimally privileged service account from the Service Account drop-down.

Click 'CREATE to launch the Node pool.

Note: The workloads will need to be migrated to the new Node pool, and the old node pools that use the default service account should be deleted to complete the remediation.
Using Command Line:
To create a minimally privileged service account:

gcloud iam service-accounts create <node_sa_name> --display-name 'GKE Node Service Account'
export NODE_SA_EMAIL=gcloud iam service-accounts list --format='value(email)' --filter='displayName:GKE Node Service Account'

Grant the following roles to the service account:

export PROJECT_ID=gcloud config get-value project
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding <project_id> --member serviceAccount:<node_sa_email> --role roles/monitoring.metricWriter
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding <project_id> --member serviceAccount:<node_sa_email> --role roles/monitoring.viewer
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding <project_id> --member serviceAccount:<node_sa_email> --role roles/logging.logWriter

To create a new Node pool using the Service account, run the following command:

gcloud container node-pools create <node_pool> --service-account=<sa_name>@<project_id>.iam.gserviceaccount.com--cluster=<cluster_name> --zone <compute_zone>

Note: The workloads will need to be migrated to the new Node pool, and the old node pools that use the default service account should be deleted to complete the remediation.

Default Value:

By default, nodes use the Compute Engine default service account when you create a new cluster.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/13178

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5, CSCv7|4.3

Plugin: GCP

Control ID: 71579146d3c37f9b7bd1009b92e783329582b405a6b6ea3e45ce9b48caf9ba13