1.5.6 Ensure that the --peer-auto-tls argument is not set to true

Information

Do not use automatically generated self-signed certificates for TLS connections between peers.

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 accessible only by authenticated etcd peers in the etcd cluster. Hence, do not use self-signed certificates for authentication.

Solution

Edit the etcd environment file (for example, `/etc/etcd/etcd.conf`) on the etcd server node and comment out the `ETCD_PEER_AUTO_TLS` parameter: `#ETCD_PEER_AUTO_TLS='true'`

Edit the etcd startup file (for example, `/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/etcd.service`) and remove the startup parameter for `--peer-auto-tls`. Based on your system, reload the daemon and restart the etcd service. For example, `systemctl daemon-reload systemctl restart etcd.service`

Impact:

All peers attempting to communicate with the etcd server will require a valid client certificate for authentication.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/1738

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(2), CSCv6|14

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: bcdd63db1ca9138ddfb4edd6893773efdedd119f78159007f8baa50361aef103