Details

etcd should be configured to make use of TLS encryption for client connections.

Rationale:

etcd is a highly-available key value store used by Kubernetes deployments for persistent storage of all of its REST API objects. These objects are sensitive in nature and should be protected by client authentication. This requires the API server to identify itself to the etcd server using a client certificate and key.

Impact:

TLS and client certificate authentication must be configured for etcd.

Solution

Follow the Kubernetes documentation and set up the TLS connection between the apiserver and etcd. Then, edit the API server pod specification file /etc/kubernetes/manifests/kube-apiserver.yaml on the master node and set the etcd certificate and key file parameters.

-etcd-certfile=-etcd-keyfile=

Default Value:

By default, -etcd-certfile and -etcd-keyfile arguments are not set

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/3371

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Identification and Authentication.This control applies to the following type of system Unix.

References

• 800-53|IA-5(2)
• CSCv6|9
• CSCv7|9

Source

• Tenable.com/audits