GKE legacy authorization enabled

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Metadata

Id: 300a9964-b086-41f7-9378-b6de3ba1c32b

Cloud Provider: GCP

Platform: Ansible

Severity: High

Category: Insecure Configurations

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Description

Legacy Authorization (ABAC) must be disabled on Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters. ABAC grants access based on user attributes instead of fine-grained RBAC rules, which can result in overly broad permissions and increase the risk of unauthorized access or privilege escalation.

For Ansible-managed clusters using the google.cloud.gcp_container_cluster or gcp_container_cluster modules, the legacy_abac.enabled property must be set to false. This rule flags cluster resources where legacy_abac.enabled is true. Ensure the property is explicitly defined as false in your cluster declaration to enforce RBAC.

Secure configuration example:

- name: Create GKE cluster with legacy ABAC disabled
  google.cloud.gcp_container_cluster:
    name: my-cluster
    location: us-central1
    legacy_abac:
      enabled: false
    initial_node_count: 3

Compliant Code Examples

#this code is a correct code for which the query should not find any result
- name: create a cluster
  google.cloud.gcp_container_cluster:
    name: my-cluster
    initial_node_count: 2
    master_auth:
      username: cluster_admin
      password: my-secret-password
    node_config:
      machine_type: n1-standard-4
      disk_size_gb: 500
    location: us-central1-a
    project: test_project
    auth_kind: serviceaccount
    service_account_file: /tmp/auth.pem
    state: present
    legacy_abac:
      enabled: no

Non-Compliant Code Examples

#this is a problematic code where the query should report a result(s)
- name: create a cluster
  google.cloud.gcp_container_cluster:
    name: my-cluster
    initial_node_count: 2
    master_auth:
      username: cluster_admin
      password: my-secret-password
    node_config:
      machine_type: n1-standard-4
      disk_size_gb: 500
    location: us-central1-a
    project: test_project
    auth_kind: serviceaccount
    service_account_file: "/tmp/auth.pem"
    state: present
    legacy_abac:
      enabled: yes