kube-request-access

Status: alpha, in-use but not widely tested.

Let's make kubectl exec and friends auditable!

kube-request-access provides audited and manually approved access to kubectl exec for developers. It works using a custom ValidatingAdmissionWebhook that verifies that a user has the required permissions using the AccessRequest and AccessGrant CRDs. The process is auditable and extendable using additional custom webhooks, e.g. to require that custom fields are set on those CRDs.

This project is inspired by the internal zkubectl cluster-access in use at Zalando.

Here's what the workflow looks like in practice:

Usage

For developers

To request exec access in a cluster, install kubectl-request and then request access as follows:

$ kubectl request exec --valid-for 1h nginx-7fb96c846b-pcnxl -- cat '/my/app/config/*'
created accessrequest ... (please wait for an admin to grant the permission)

# after the request is granted
$ kubectl exec nginx-7fb96c846b-pcnxl -- cat '/my/app/config/*'
...

See kubectl-request docs docs for more details.

For operators

See Architecture and Deployment sections below.

Architecture

flowchart TD
    A[Developer] -->|kubectl exec ...| B[Kubernetes API]
    B  --> Bv[ValidatingAdmissionWebhook]
    Bv --> C(kube-request-access)
    C --> D[Matching AccessRequest?]
    %%D -->|Access denied| B
    D -->|Yes| E[Matching AccessGrant?]
    %%E -->|Access denied| B
    E -->|Yes| F[Allowed]
    F --> B

    C -->|Allowed/Denied| audit
    %%D --> audit
    %%E --> audit
    subgraph audit [audit]
        aa[Send to optional audit webhook] --> ab[(Audit log)]
    end

    %%subgraph access
    %%  dev --> req
    %%  admin -->|grant/deny| req --> grant
    %%  grant --> validation
    %%end

• kube-request-access intercepts AccessRequests, AccessGrants and pods/exec API calls and decides if they are valid
• developers request access using kubectl request exec and admins grant it using kubectl request grant (kubectl-request plugin)
• kube-request-access can defer to custom webhooks to implement organization-specific auditing and additional validation, e.g. to store auditing information in a database or send notifications to a chat

Design decisions

• all objects should be managed using the Kubernetes API (kube-request-access itself is stateless, all state is in the Kubernetes API using CRDs)
• this project should not contain organization-specific integrations, anything custom needs to be managed using extension points provided by kube-request-access
• for now only non-interactive access is allowed, to make auditing for all commands possible

Operations concerns

• kube-request-access not being available would prevent any intercepted requests from succeeding (pods/exec, AccessRequest, AccessGrant)
  • deleting the ValidatingWebhookConfiguration would bring pods/exec back (but potentially grant more permissions if exec permissions are managed using a static role)

Deployment

kube-request-access is the main component to deploy. However, for it to work a ValidatingWebhookConfiguration and appropriate RBAC permissions need to exist as well. For an example deployment, see the deployment in ./dev which can also be used for local testing as described below.

Additionally implementing some of the webhooks will improve the workflow, see ./examples for example implementations of each. For example, the audit webhook can be used to notify admins via chat that there are new requests for access.

We also recommend to use the audit webhook to

Finally the github.com/spreadshirt/kube-request-access/webhooks package defines the structs used by the webhooks and can be used by implementations.

Development

Run ./scripts/run to get a full local development environment. It sets up a local k3d cluster if it does not exist yet and deploys everything necessary to run to it.

Then you can run kubectl exec -it deployment/nginx -- /bin/sh and similar commands to try out the workflow locally.

License

Copyright 2022-2023 © sprd.net AG. All rights reserved.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0