5.2.3 Minimize the admission of containers wishing to share the host process ID namespace

Information

Do not generally permit containers to be run with the hostPID flag set to true.

Rationale:

A container running in the host's PID namespace can inspect processes running outside the container. If the container also has access to ptrace capabilities this can be used to escalate privileges outside of the container.

There should be at least one admission control policy defined which does not permit containers to share the host PID namespace.

If you need to run containers which require hostPID, this should be defined in a separate policy and you should carefully check to ensure that only limited service accounts and users are given permission to use that policy.

Impact:

Pods defined with spec.hostPID: true will not be permitted unless they are run under a specific policy.

Solution

Add policies to each namespace in the cluster which has user workloads to restrict the admission of hostPID containers.

Default Value:

By default, there are no restrictions on the creation of hostPID containers.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/4111

Item Details

Category: SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|SC-7(8), CSCv7|12.9

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 872f7285abea71bcb1f80f382651eb7cabaf1977fd3748e0328abd1bdf0f73de