RBAC roles with impersonate permission

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Metadata

Id: 9f85c3f6-26fd-4007-938a-2e0cb0100980

Cloud Provider: k8s

Framework: Kubernetes

Severity: Medium

Category: Access Control

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Description

Roles or ClusterRoles with the impersonate permission allow subjects to assume the rights of other users, groups, or service accounts. In case of compromise, attackers may abuse this sudo-like functionality to achieve privilege escalation.

Compliant Code Examples

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: impersonator-role-neg
  namespace: default
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["users", "groups", "serviceaccounts"]
  verbs: ["get"]
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: rbac-impersonate-binding
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: impersonator-sa-neg
  namespace: default
  apiGroup: ""
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: impersonator-role-neg
  apiGroup: ""

Non-Compliant Code Examples

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: impersonator-role
  namespace: default
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["users", "groups", "serviceaccounts"]
  verbs: ["impersonate"]
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: rbac-impersonate-binding
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: impersonator-sa
  namespace: default
  apiGroup: ""
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: impersonator-role
  apiGroup: ""