Understand Amazon EKS created pod security policies (PSP)

The Kubernetes Pod security policy admission controller validates Pod creation and update requests against a set of rules. By default, Amazon EKS clusters ship with a fully permissive security policy with no restrictions. For more information, see Pod Security Policies in the Kubernetes documentation.

Note

The PodSecurityPolicy (PSP) was deprecated in Kubernetes version 1.21 and removed in Kubernetes 1.25. PSPs are being replaced with Pod Security Admission (PSA), a built-in admission controller that implements the security controls outlined in the Pod Security Standards (PSS) . PSA and PSS have both reached beta feature states, and are enabled in Amazon EKS by default. To address PSP removal in 1.25, we recommend that you implement PSS in Amazon EKS. For more information, see Implementing Pod Security Standards in Amazon EKS on the AWS blog.

Amazon EKS default Pod security policy

Amazon EKS clusters with Kubernetes version 1.13 or higher have a default Pod security policy named eks.privileged. This policy has no restriction on what kind of Pod can be accepted into the system, which is equivalent to running Kubernetes with the PodSecurityPolicy controller disabled.

Note

This policy was created to maintain backwards compatibility with clusters that did not have the PodSecurityPolicy controller enabled. You can create more restrictive policies for your cluster and for individual namespaces and service accounts and then delete the default policy to enable the more restrictive policies.

You can view the default policy with the following command.

kubectl get psp eks.privileged

An example output is as follows.

NAME             PRIV   CAPS   SELINUX    RUNASUSER   FSGROUP    SUPGROUP   READONLYROOTFS   VOLUMES
eks.privileged   true   *      RunAsAny   RunAsAny    RunAsAny   RunAsAny   false            *

For more details, you can describe the policy with the following command.

kubectl describe psp eks.privileged

An example output is as follows.

Name:  eks.privileged

Settings:
  Allow Privileged:                       true
  Allow Privilege Escalation:             0xc0004ce5f8
  Default Add Capabilities:               <none>
  Required Drop Capabilities:             <none>
  Allowed Capabilities:                   *
  Allowed Volume Types:                   *
  Allow Host Network:                     true
  Allow Host Ports:                       0-65535
  Allow Host PID:                         true
  Allow Host IPC:                         true
  Read Only Root Filesystem:              false
  SELinux Context Strategy: RunAsAny
    User:                                 <none>
    Role:                                 <none>
    Type:                                 <none>
    Level:                                <none>
  Run As User Strategy: RunAsAny
    Ranges:                               <none>
  FSGroup Strategy: RunAsAny
    Ranges:                               <none>
  Supplemental Groups Strategy: RunAsAny
    Ranges:                               <none>

You can view the full YAML file for the eks.privileged Pod security policy, its cluster role, and cluster role binding in Install or restore the default Pod security policy.

Delete the default Amazon EKS Pod security policy

If you create more restrictive policies for your Pods, then after doing so, you can delete the default Amazon EKS eks.privileged Pod security policy to enable your custom policies.

Important

If you are using version 1.7.0 or later of the CNI plugin and you assign a custom Pod security policy to the aws-node Kubernetes service account used for the aws-node Pods deployed by the Daemonset, then the policy must have NET_ADMIN in its allowedCapabilities section along with hostNetwork: true and privileged: true in the policy's spec.

To delete the default Pod security policy

1. Create a file named privileged-podsecuritypolicy.yaml with the contents in the example file in Install or restore the default Pod security policy.

2. Delete the YAML with the following command. This deletes the default Pod security policy, the ClusterRole, and the ClusterRoleBinding associated with it.

   kubectl delete -f privileged-podsecuritypolicy.yaml
   

Install or restore the default Pod security policy

If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Kubernetes, or have modified or deleted the default Amazon EKS eks.privileged Pod security policy, you can restore it with the following steps.

To install or restore the default Pod security policy

1. Create a file called privileged-podsecuritypolicy.yaml with the following contents.

   apiVersion: policy/v1beta1
   kind: PodSecurityPolicy
   metadata:
     name: eks.privileged
     annotations:
       kubernetes.io/description: 'privileged allows full unrestricted access to
         Pod features, as if the PodSecurityPolicy controller was not enabled.'
       seccomp.security.alpha.kubernetes.io/allowedProfileNames: '*'
     labels:
       kubernetes.io/cluster-service: "true"
       eks.amazonaws.com/component: pod-security-policy
   spec:
     privileged: true
     allowPrivilegeEscalation: true
     allowedCapabilities:
     - '*'
     volumes:
     - '*'
     hostNetwork: true
     hostPorts:
     - min: 0
       max: 65535
     hostIPC: true
     hostPID: true
     runAsUser:
       rule: 'RunAsAny'
     seLinux:
       rule: 'RunAsAny'
     supplementalGroups:
       rule: 'RunAsAny'
     fsGroup:
       rule: 'RunAsAny'
     readOnlyRootFilesystem: false
   
   ---
   apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
   kind: ClusterRole
   metadata:
     name: eks:podsecuritypolicy:privileged
     labels:
       kubernetes.io/cluster-service: "true"
       eks.amazonaws.com/component: pod-security-policy
   rules:
   - apiGroups:
     - policy
     resourceNames:
     - eks.privileged
     resources:
     - podsecuritypolicies
     verbs:
     - use
   
   ---
   apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
   kind: ClusterRoleBinding
   metadata:
     name: eks:podsecuritypolicy:authenticated
     annotations:
       kubernetes.io/description: 'Allow all authenticated users to create privileged Pods.'
     labels:
       kubernetes.io/cluster-service: "true"
       eks.amazonaws.com/component: pod-security-policy
   roleRef:
     apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
     kind: ClusterRole
     name: eks:podsecuritypolicy:privileged
   subjects:
     - kind: Group
       apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
       name: system:authenticated

2. Apply the YAML with the following command.

   kubectl apply -f privileged-podsecuritypolicy.yaml