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Role-based access control (RBAC) is the default access control approach in Kubernetes (K8s). This model categorizes permissions using specific verbs to define allowed interactions with resources. Within this system, three lesser-known permissions — escalate, bind and impersonate — can override existing role limitations, grant unauthorized access to restricted areas, expose confidential data or even allow complete control over a cluster. This article explains these potent permissions, offering insights into their functions and guidance on mitigating their associated risks.

About RBAC Role and Verbs

If you are not already familiar with the key concepts of Kubernetes RBAC, please refer to the Kubernetes’ documentation. However, I do need to briefly describe one important concept directly related to this article: role. This describes access rights to K8s resources within a specific namespace and the available operations. Roles consist of a list of rules. Rules include verbs — available operations for defined resources. Here is an example of a role from the K8s documentation that grants read access to pods: Verbs like get, watch and list are commonly used. However, more intriguing ones also exist.

Three Lesser-Known Kubernetes RBAC Permissions

For more granular and complex permissions management, the K8s RBAC has the following verbs:

• escalate: Allows users to create and edit roles even if they don’t have initial permissions to do so.
• bind: Allows users to create and edit role bindings and cluster role bindings with permissions they haven’t been assigned.
• impersonate: Allows users to impersonate other users and gain their privileges in the cluster or in a different group. Critical data can be accessed using this verb.

Below, you’ll learn about these verbs in more detail. But first, create a test namespace and name it rbac: Then, create a test service account (SA) resource named privsec in the rbac namespace you just created: You’ll use these throughout the rest of this tutorial.

Escalate

By default, the Kubernetes RBAC API doesn’t allow users to escalate privileges by simply editing a role or role binding. This restriction works at the API level even if the RBAC authorizer is disabled. The only exception is if the role has the escalate verb. In the image below, the SA with only update and patch permissions can’t add a new verb to the role. But if you add a new role with the escalate verb, it becomes possible. Create a role that allows read-only access to pods and roles in this namespace: Bind this role to the SA privesc: Check if the role can be updated: The SA can read roles but can’t edit them. Create a new role that allows role editing in the rbac namespace: Bind this new role to the SA privesc: Check if the role can be updated: Check if the role can be deleted: The SA can now edit roles but can’t delete them. For the sake of experimental accuracy, check the SA capabilities by using a JSON Web Token (JWT): Remove the old authentication parameters from the config, as Kubernetes will check the user’s certificate first and won’t check the token if it already knows about the certificate. This role shows you can edit other roles: Try to add a new verb, list, which you already used in the read-only view role: Success. Now, try to add a new verb, delete, which you haven’t used in other roles: This confirms that Kubernetes doesn’t allow users or service accounts to add new permissions if they don’t already have them — only if users or service accounts are bound to roles with such permissions. So extend the privesc SA permissions. Do this by using the admin config and adding a new role with the escalate verb: Now, bind the privesc SA to the new role: Check if you can add a new verb to the role now: Now it works. The user can escalate the SA privileges by editing the existing role. This means that the escalate verb gives the appropriate admin privileges, including those of the namespace admin or even cluster admin.

Bind

The bind verb allows the user to edit the RoleBinding or ClusterRoleBinding objects for privilege escalation, similar to escalate, which allows the user to edit Role or ClusterRole. In the image below, the SA with the role binding that has the update, patch and create verbs can’t add delete until you create a new role with the bind verb. Take a closer look at how this works. Change the kubeconfig file to admin: Remove old roles and bindings: Allow the SA to view and edit the role binding and pod resources in the namespace: Create separate roles to work with pods, but still don’t bind the role: Change the kubeconfig to the SA privesc and try to edit the role binding: The new role has been successfully bound to the SA. Note that the pod-view-edit role contains verbs and resources that were already bound to the SA by the role that binds view and edit. Now, try to bind a role with a new verb, delete, which is missing among the roles that are bound to the SA: Kubernetes doesn’t allow this, even though you have permission to edit and create role bindings. But you can fix that with the bind verb. Do so using the admin config: Try once more to create a role binding with the new delete verb: Now it works. So, using the bind verb, the SA can bind any role to itself or any user.

Impersonate

The impersonate verb in K8s is like sudo in Linux. If users have impersonate access, they can authenticate as other users and run commands on their behalf. The kubectl tool has the --as, --as-group and --as-uid options, which allow commands to be run as a different user, group or universally unique identifier (UUID), respectively. If a user was given impersonation permissions, they would become the namespace admin, or — if there is a cluster-admin service account in the namespace — even the cluster admin. The impersonate verb is helpful to check the RBAC permissions delegated to a user. An admin should perform a command according to the template kubectl auth can-i --as=$USERNAME -n $NAMESPACE $VERB $RESOURCE and check if the authorization works as designed. In this example, the SA wouldn’t get info about pods in the rbac namespace by just performing kubectl -n rbac get pod. But it becomes possible if there is a role with the impersonate verb: Now, create a role with the impersonate verb and a role binding: (Look at the --resource-name parameter in the above command: It only allows impersonation as the privesc SA.) Create a new context: Check the permissions: No additional permissions exist besides impersonate, as specified in the role. But if you impersonate the impersonator SA as the privesc SA, you get the same permissions that the privesc SA has: Thus, the impersonate SA has all of its own privileges as well as all the privileges of the SA it is impersonating, including those that a namespace admin has.

How To Mitigate Potential Threats

The escalate, bind and impersonate verbs can be used to create flexible permissions, resulting in granular management of access to K8s infrastructure. But these verbs also open the door to malicious use, since, in some cases, they enable a user to access crucial infrastructure components with admin privileges. Three practices can help you mitigate the potential dangers of misuse or malicious use of these verbs:

1. Regularly check RBAC manifests.
2. Use the resourceNames field in the Role and ClusterRole manifests.
3. Use external tools to monitor roles.

Take a look at each in turn.

Regularly Check RBAC Manifests

To prevent unauthorized access and RBAC misconfiguration, periodically check your cluster RBAC manifests:

kubectl get clusterrole -A -oyaml | yq '.items[] | select (.rules[].verbs[] | contains("esalate" | "bind" | "impersonate")) | .metadata.name'

kubectl get role -A -oyaml | yq '.items[] | select (.rules[].verbs[] | contains("esalate" | "bind" | "impersonate")) | .metadata.name'

Use the resourceNames Field

To restrict the use of escalate, bind, impersonate or any other verbs, configure the resourceNames field in the Role and ClusterRole manifests. There, you can — and should — enter the names of resources that can be used. Here is an example of a ClusterRole that allows creation of a ClusterRoleBinding with roleRef named edit and view: You can do the same with escalate and impersonate. Note that in the case of bind, an admin sets permissions for a role, and users can bind that role to themselves only if allowed to do so in resourceNames. With escalate, users can write any parameters within a role and become admins of a namespace or cluster. So, bind restricts users, while escalate gives them more options. Keep this in mind if you need to grant these permissions.

Use External Tools To Monitor Roles

Consider using automated systems that monitor creating or editing roles with suspicious content, such as Falco or Tetragon. You can also redirect Kubernetes audit logs to a log management system like Gcore Managed Logging, which is useful for analyzing and parsing K8s logs. To prevent accidental resource deletion, create a separate service account with the delete verb and allow users to impersonate only that service account. This is the principle of least privilege. To simplify this process, you can use the kubectl plug-in kubectl-sudo. At Gcore, we use these methods to make our Managed Kubernetes service more secure; we recommend that all our customers do the same. Using managed services doesn’t guarantee that your services are completely secured by default, but at Gcore, we do everything possible to ensure our customers’ protection, including encouraging RBAC best practices.

Conclusion

The escalate, bind and impersonate verbs allow admins to manage access to K8s infrastructure flexibly and let users escalate their privileges. These are powerful tools that, if abused, can cause significant damage to a K8s cluster. Carefully review any use of these verbs and ensure that the least privileged rule is followed. Users must have the minimum privileges necessary to operate, no more.

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