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Hardening the Kubewarden webhooks

The Kubewarden stack uses webhooks to enforce policies in a Kubernetes cluster. Each PolicyServer instance exposes a webhook that the Kubernetes API server calls to validate and mutate resources. Moreover, the kubewarden-controller exposes webhooks to validate and mutate the custom resources provided by the Kubewarden project.

To decrease their attack surface, you should limit access to these webhooks to the only valid callers they have:

  • the Kubernetes API server
  • the audit scanner component. You can do this using network policies and authentication independently, or together, to harden the webhooks against attacks.

Block External Traffic Using Network Policies​

Webhooks are only expected to accept requests from the Kubernetes API server and the audit scanner component. By default, however, webhooks can accept traffic from any source. If you are using a Container Network Interface (CNI) that supports Network Policies, you can create a policy that blocks traffic that doesn't originate from the API server.

The built-in NetworkPolicy resource in Kubernetes can't block or admit traffic from the cluster hosts. Also, the kube-apiserver process is always running on the host network. Therefore, you must use the advanced network policy resources from the CNI in use. Examples for Calico and Cilium follow. Consult the documentation for your CNI for more details.

Calico​

Use the NetworkPolicy resource in the crd.projectcalico.org/v1 API group, to define a network policy like this:

apiVersion: crd.projectcalico.org/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: allow-k8s-and-audit-scanner
  namespace: kubewarden # namespace where the kubewarden stack is deployed
spec:
  selector: 'app.kubernetes.io/component in {"kubewarden-controller", "policy-server"}'
  types:
    - Ingress
  ingress:
    # this allows the Kubernetes API server to reach the kubewarden controller and
    # all the policy server instances
    - action: Allow
      protocol: TCP
      source:
        nets:
        # CIDR of the control plane host. May list more than 1 if the hosts are in different subnets.
        - 192.168.42.0/24
      destination:
        selector: 'app.kubernetes.io/component in {"kubewarden-controller", "policy-server"}'
    # this allows all the workloads defined inside of the kubewarden namespace
    # (including audit-scanner) to reach the kubewarden controller and all the
    # policy server instances
    - action: Allow
      protocol: TCP
      source:
        # namespace where the kubewarden stack is deployed
        namespaceSelector: 'kubernetes.io/metadata.name == "kubewarden"' # namespace where the kubewarden stack is deployed
      destination:
        selector: 'app.kubernetes.io/component in {"kubewarden-controller", "policy-server"}'
warning

This network policy uses label selectors introduced in Kubewarden 1.23.0. If you are using an older version, you must update the labels in the policy to match the ones used in your deployment.

More specifically, write the

selector: 'app.kubernetes.io/component in {"kubewarden-controller", "policy-server"}'

selectors as:

selector: 'app.kubernetes.io/name == "kubewarden-controller" || has(kubewarden/policy-server)'

Cilium​

Use the CiliumNetworkPolicy resource in the cilium.io/v2 API group to define a network policy like the following one:

apiVersion: "cilium.io/v2"
kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: allow-k8s-and-audit-scanner
  namespace: kubewarden # namespace where the kubewarden stack is deployed
spec:
  endpointSelector:
    matchExpressions:
      - key: app.kubernetes.io/component
        operator: In
        values:
          - policy-server
          - controller
  ingress:
    # this allows the Kubernetes API server to reach the kubewarden controller and
    # all the policy server instances
    - fromEntities:
      - host
      - remote-node
    # this allows all the workloads defined inside of the kubewarden namespace
    # (including audit-scanner) to reach the kubewarden controller and all the
    # policy server instances
    - fromEndpoints:
        - matchLabels:
            # namespace where the kubewarden stack is deployed
            k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace: kubewarden
warning

This network policy uses label selectors introduced in Kubewarden 1.23.0. If you are using an older version, you must update the labels in the policy to match the ones used in your deployment.

More specifically, write the

matchExpressions:
  - key: app.kubernetes.io/component
    operator: In
    values:
      - policy-server
      - controller

expression as:

endpointSelector:
matchExpressions:
  - key: app.kubernetes.io/name
    operator: In
    values:
      - kubewarden-controller
  - key: kubewarden/policy-server
    operator: Exists

Require the Kubernetes API Server to authenticate to the webhook​

tip

Refer to this how-to for a step-by-step guide on configuring the Kubernetes API server of K3s to authenticate to the webhook.

The webhooks exposed by the Kubewarden stack should only accept requests from the Kubernetes API server or from the audit scanner component. By default, these webhooks don’t require clients to authenticate to it. They accept any request.

You can configure the webhooks to require credentials so that only the API server and the audit scanner processes can access them. See the Kubernetes documentation for more information.

  1. Configure the API server to present a client certificate to the webhook, pointing to an AdmissionConfiguration file to configure the ValidatingAdmissionWebhook and MutatingAdmissionWebhook plug-ins:

    Create a file named admission.yaml with the following contents:

    apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
    kind: AdmissionConfiguration
    plugins:
    - name: ValidatingAdmissionWebhook
      configuration:
        apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
        kind: WebhookAdmissionConfiguration
        kubeConfigFile: "/etc/k8s/admission/kubeconfig"
    - name: MutatingAdmissionWebhook
      configuration:
        apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
        kind: WebhookAdmissionConfiguration
        kubeConfigFile: "/etc/k8s/admission/kubeconfig"

    This is the same configuration file used to configure other plug-ins, such as PodSecurity. If your distribution or setup uses additional admission plug-ins, you should also configure those.

  2. Create the kubeconfig file the admission plug-ins refer to. Kubewarden only supports client certificate authentication, so generate a TLS key pair, and set the kubeconfig to use either client-certificate and client-key or client-certificate-data and client-key-data.

    For example:

    # /etc/k8s/admission/kubeconfig
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: Config
    users:
    - name: '*.kubewarden.svc'
      user:
        client-certificate: /path/to/client/cert
        client-key: /path/to/client/key

  3. Start the kube-apiserver binary with the flag --admission-control-config-file pointing to your AdmissionConfiguration file. The way to do this varies by distribution, and it isn't supported universally, such as in hosted Kubernetes providers. Consult the documentation for your Kubernetes distribution.

  4. Make the certificate of the root CA that issued the API server client certificate available to the Kubewarden stack.

    Put its content into a ConfigMap under the kubewarden namespace using a key named client-ca.crt.

    Assuming the root CA is available at /etc/k8s/admission/certs/rootCA.crt, create the ConfigMap with the following command:

    kubectl create configmap -n kubewarden api-server-mtls \
        --from-file=client-ca.crt=/etc/k8s/admission/certs/rootCA.crt

  5. Finally, when installing the kubewarden-controller Helm chart, make sure to enable the following values:

    • Set mTLS.enable to true.
    • Set mTLS.configMapName to the name of the ConfigMap previously created.

    The ConfigMap name is api-server-mtls, so the Helm command to install the kubewarden-controller is:

    helm install --wait -n kubewarden kubewarden-controller kubewarden/kubewarden-controller \
        --set mTLS.enable=true \
        --set mTLS.configMapName=api-server-mtls

    The Kubewarden controller creates a client certificate for use by the audit scanner component. The certificate is automatically rotated, by the controller, when needed.