5.2.10 Minimize the admission of containers with capabilities assigned

Information

Do not generally permit containers with capabilities

Rationale:

Containers run with a default set of capabilities as assigned by the Container Runtime. Capabilities are parts of the rights generally granted on a Linux system to the root user.

In many cases applications running in containers do not require any capabilities to operate, so from the perspective of the principal of least privilege use of capabilities should be minimized.

Impact:

Pods with containers require capabilities to operate will not be permitted.

NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Review the use of capabilities in applications running on your cluster. Where a namespace contains applications which do not require any Linux capabilities to operate consider adding a policy which forbids the admission of containers which do not drop all capabilities.

Default Value:

By default, there are no restrictions on the creation of containers with additional capabilities

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/11107