Chapter 7. Default security policies
The default security policies in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes provide broad coverage to identify security issues and ensure best practices for security in your environment. By configuring those policies, you can automatically prevent high-risk service deployments in your environment and respond to runtime security incidents.
The severity levels for policies in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes are different from the severity levels that Red Hat Product Security assigns.
The Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes policy severity levels are Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Red Hat Product Security rates vulnerability severity levels as Critical, Important, Moderate, and Low.
While a policy’s severity level and the Red Hat Product Security severity levels can interact, it is important to distinguish between them. For more information about the Red Hat Product Security severity levels, see Severity Ratings.
7.1. Critical severity security policies
The following table lists the default security policies in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes that are of critical severity. The policies are organized by life cycle stage.
| Life cycle stage | Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build or Deploy | Apache Struts: CVE-2017-5638 | Alerts when deployments have images that contain the CVE-2017-5638 Apache Struts vulnerability. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Log4Shell: log4j Remote Code Execution vulnerability | Alerts when deployments include images that contain the CVE-2021-44228 and CVE-2021-45046 Log4Shell vulnerabilities. Flaws exist in the Apache Log4j Java logging library in versions 2.0-beta9 - 2.15.0, excluding version 2.12.2. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Spring4Shell (Spring Framework Remote Code Execution) and Spring Cloud Function vulnerabilities | Alerts when deployments include images that contain either the CVE-2022-22965 vulnerability, which affects Spring MVC, and the CVE-2022-22963 vulnerability, which affects Spring Cloud. In versions 3.16, 3.2.2, and older unsupported versions, Spring Cloud contains flaws. Flaws exist in Spring Framework in versions 5.3.0 - 5.3.17, versions 5.2.0 - 5.2.19, and in older unsupported versions. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Iptables Executed in Privileged Container | Alerts when privileged pods run iptables. | Enabled |
7.2. High severity security policies
The following table lists the default security policies in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes that are of high severity. The policies are organized by life cycle stage.
| Life cycle stage | Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build or Deploy | Fixable Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) >= 7 | Alerts when deployments with fixable vulnerabilities have a CVSS of at least 7. However, Red Hat recommends that you create policies using Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) severity instead of CVSS score. | Disabled |
| Build or Deploy | Fixable Severity at least Important | Alerts when deployments with fixable vulnerabilities have a severity rating of at least Important. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Rapid Reset: Denial of Service Vulnerability in HTTP/2 Protocol |
Alerts on deployments with images containing components that are susceptible to a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability for HTTP/2 servers. This addresses a flaw in the handling of multiplexed streams in HTTP/2. A client can rapidly create a request and immediately reset them, which creates extra work for the server while avoiding hitting any server-side limits, resulting in a denial of service attack. To use this policy, consider cloning the policy and adding the | Disabled |
| Build or Deploy | Secure Shell (ssh) Port Exposed in Image | Alerts when deployments expose port 22, which is commonly reserved for SSH access. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Emergency Deployment Annotation | Alerts when deployments use the emergency annotation, such as "admission.stackrox.io/break-glass":"ticket-1234" to circumvent StackRox Admission controller checks. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Environment Variable Contains Secret | Alerts when deployments have environment variables that contain 'SECRET'. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Fixable CVSS >= 6 and Privileged | Alerts when deployments run in privileged mode with fixable vulnerabilities that have a CVSS of at least 6. However, Red Hat recommends that you create policies using CVE severity instead of CVSS score. | Disabled by default in version 3.72.0 and later |
| Deploy | Privileged Containers with Important and Critical Fixable CVEs | Alerts when containers that run in privileged mode have important or critical fixable vulnerabilities. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Secret Mounted as Environment Variable | Alerts when a deployment has a Kubernetes secret that is mounted as an environment variable. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Secure Shell (ssh) Port Exposed | Alerts when deployments expose port 22, which is commonly reserved for SSH access. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Cryptocurrency Mining Process Execution | Spawns the crypto-currency mining process. | Enabled |
| Runtime | iptables Execution | Detects when someone runs iptables, which is a deprecated way of managing network states in containers. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Kubernetes Actions: Exec into Pod | Alerts when the Kubernetes API receives a request to run a command in a container. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Linux Group Add Execution | Detects when someone runs the addgroup or groupadd binary to add a Linux group. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Linux User Add Execution | Detects when someone runs the useradd or adduser binary to add a Linux user. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Login Binaries | Indicates when someone tries to log in. | Disabled |
| Runtime | Network Management Execution | Detects when someone runs binary files that can manipulate network configuration and management. | Enabled |
| Runtime | nmap Execution | Alerts when someone starts the nmap process in a container during run time. | Enabled |
| Runtime | OpenShift: Kubeadmin Secret Accessed | Alerts when someone accesses the kubeadmin secret. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Password Binaries | Indicates when someone attempts to change a password. | Disabled |
| Runtime | Process Targeting Cluster Kubelet Endpoint | Detects the misuse of the healthz, kubelet API, or heapster endpoint. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Process Targeting Cluster Kubernetes Docker Stats Endpoint | Detects the misuse of the Kubernetes docker stats endpoint. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Process Targeting Kubernetes Service Endpoint | Detects the misuse of the Kubernetes Service API endpoint. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Process with UID 0 | Alerts when deployments contain processes that run with UID 0. | Disabled |
| Runtime | Secure Shell Server (sshd) Execution | Detects containers that run the SSH daemon. | Enabled |
| Runtime | SetUID Processes | Use setuid binary files, which permit people to run certain programs with escalated privileges. | Disabled |
| Runtime | Shadow File Modification | Indicates when someone tries to modify shadow files. | Disabled |
| Runtime | Shell Spawned by Java Application | Detects when a shell, such as bash, csh, sh, or zsh, is run as a subprocess of a Java application. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Unauthorized Network Flow | Generates a violation for any network flows that fall outside of the baselines of the "alert on anomalous violations" setting. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Unauthorized Processed Execution | Generates a violation for any process execution that is not explicitly allowed by a locked process baseline for a container specification in a Kubernetes deployment. | Enabled |
7.3. Medium severity security policies
The following table lists the default security policies in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes that are of medium severity. The policies are organized by life cycle stage.
| Life cycle stage | Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build | Docker CIS 4.4: Ensure images are scanned and rebuilt to include security patches | Alerts when images are not scanned and rebuilt to include security patches. It is important to scan images often to find vulnerabilities, rebuild the images to include security patches, and then instantiate containers for the images. | Disabled |
| Deploy | 30-Day Scan Age | Alerts when a deployment has not been scanned in 30 days. | Enabled |
| Deploy | CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability added | Alerts when a deployment includes containers that are escalating with CAP_SYS_ADMIN. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Container using read-write root filesystem | Alerts when a deployment includes containers that have read-write root file systems. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Container with privilege escalation allowed | Alerts when a container might be running with unintended privileges, creating a security risk. This situation can happen when a container process that has more privileges than its parent process allows the container to run with unintended privileges. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Deployments should have at least one Ingress Network Policy | Alerts if deployments are missing an Ingress Network Policy. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Deployments with externally exposed endpoints | Detects if a deployment has any service that is externally exposed through any methods. Deployments with services exposed outside of the cluster are at a higher risk of attempted intrusions because they are reachable outside of the cluster. This policy provides an alert so that you can verify that service exposure outside of the cluster is required. If the service is only needed for intra-cluster communication, use service type ClusterIP. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Docker CIS 5.1: Ensure that, if applicable, an AppArmor profile is enabled | Uses AppArmor to protect the Linux operating system and applications by enforcing a security policy that is known as an AppArmor profile. AppArmor is a Linux application security system that is available on some Linux distributions by default, such as Debian and Ubuntu. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Docker CIS 5.15: Ensure that the host’s process namespace is not shared | Creates process-level isolation between the containers and the host. The Process ID (PID) namespace isolates the process ID space, which means that processes in different PID namespaces can have the same PID. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Docker CIS 5.16: Ensure that the host’s IPC namespace is not shared | Alerts when the IPC namespace on the host is shared with containers. The IPC (POSIX/SysV IPC) namespace separates named shared memory segments, semaphores, and message queues. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Docker CIS 5.19: Ensure mount propagation mode is not enabled | Alerts when mount propagation mode is enabled. When mount propagation mode is enabled, you can mount container volumes in Bidirectional, Host to Container, and None modes. Do not use Bidirectional mount propagation mode unless it is explicitly needed. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Docker CIS 5.21: Ensure the default seccomp profile is not disabled | Alerts when the seccomp profile is disabled. The seccomp profile uses an allowlist to permit common system calls and blocks all others. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Docker CIS 5.7: Ensure privileged ports are not mapped within containers | Alerts when privileged ports are mapped within containers. The TCP/IP port numbers that are lower than 1024 are privileged ports. Normal users and processes can not use them for security reasons, but containers might map their ports to privileged ports. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Docker CIS 5.9 and 5.20: Ensure that the host’s network namespace is not shared | Alerts when the host’s network namespace is shared. When HostNetwork is enabled, the container is not placed inside a separate network stack, and the container’s networking is not containerized. As a result, the container has full access to the host’s network interfaces, and a shared UTS namespace is enabled. The UTS namespace provides isolation between the hostname and the NIS domain name, and it sets the hostname and the domain, which are visible to running processes in that namespace. Processes that run within containers do not typically require to know the hostname or the domain name, so the UTS namespace should not be shared with the host. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Images with no scans | Alerts when a deployment includes images that were not scanned. | Disabled |
| Runtime | Kubernetes Actions: Port Forward to Pod | Alerts when the Kubernetes API receives a port forward request. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Mount Container Runtime Socket | Alerts when a deployment has a volume mount on the container runtime socket. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Mounting Sensitive Host Directories | Alerts when a deployment mounts sensitive host directories. | Enabled |
| Deploy | No resource requests or limits specified | Alerts when a deployment includes containers that do not have resource requests and limits. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Pod Service Account Token Automatically Mounted | Protects pod default service account tokens from being compromised by minimizing the mounting of the default service account token to only those pods whose applications require interaction with the Kubernetes API. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Privileged Container | Alerts when a deployment includes containers that run in privileged mode. | Enabled |
| Runtime | crontab Execution | Detects the usage of the crontab scheduled jobs editor. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Netcat Execution Detected | Detects when netcat runs in a container. | Enabled |
| Runtime | OpenShift: Advanced Cluster Security Central Admin Secret Accessed | Alerts when someone accesses the Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security Central secret. | Enabled |
| Runtime | OpenShift: Kubernetes Secret Accessed by an Impersonated User | Alerts when someone impersonates a user to access a secret in the cluster. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Remote File Copy Binary Execution | Alerts when a deployment runs a remote file copy tool. | Enabled |
7.4. Low severity security policies
The following table lists the default security policies in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes that are of low severity. The policies are organized by life cycle stage.
| Life cycle stage | Name | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build or Deploy | 90-Day Image Age | Alerts when a deployment has not been updated in 90 days. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | ADD Command used instead of COPY | Alerts when a deployment uses an ADD command. | Disabled |
| Build or Deploy | Alpine Linux Package Manager (apk) in Image | Alerts when a deployment includes the Alpine Linux package manager (apk). | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Curl in Image | Alerts when a deployment includes curl. | Disabled |
| Build or Deploy | Docker CIS 4.1: Ensure That a User for the Container Has Been Created | Ensures that containers are running as non-root users. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Docker CIS 4.7: Alert on Update Instruction | Ensures that update instructions are not used alone in the Dockerfile. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Insecure specified in CMD | Alerts when a deployment uses 'insecure' in the command. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Latest tag | Alerts when a deployment includes images that use the 'latest' tag. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Red Hat Package Manager in Image | Alerts when a deployment includes components of the Red Hat, Fedora, or CentOS package management system. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Required Image Label | Alerts when a deployment includes images that are missing the specified label. | Disabled |
| Build or Deploy | Ubuntu Package Manager Execution | Detects the usage of the Ubuntu package management system. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Ubuntu Package Manager in Image | Alerts when a deployment includes components of the Debian or Ubuntu package management system in the image. | Enabled |
| Build or Deploy | Wget in Image | Alerts when a deployment includes wget. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Drop All Capabilities | Alerts when a deployment does not drop all capabilities. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Improper Usage of Orchestrator Secrets Volume | Alerts when a deployment uses a Dockerfile with 'VOLUME /run/secrets'. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Kubernetes Dashboard Deployed | Alerts when a Kubernetes dashboard service is detected. | Enabled |
| Deploy | Required Annotation: Email | Alerts when a deployment is missing the 'email' annotation. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Required Annotation: Owner/Team | Alerts when a deployment is missing the 'owner' or 'team' annotation. | Disabled |
| Deploy | Required Label: Owner/Team | Alerts when a deployment is missing the 'owner' or 'team' label. | Disabled |
| Runtime | Alpine Linux Package Manager Execution | Alerts when the Alpine Linux package manager (apk) is run at run time. | Enabled |
| Runtime | chkconfig Execution | Detects the usage of the ckconfig service manager, which is typically not used in a container. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Compiler Tool Execution | Alerts when binary files that compile software are run at run time. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Red Hat Package Manager Execution | Alerts when Red Hat, Fedora, or CentOS package manager programs are run at run time. | Enabled |
| Runtime | Shell Management | Alerts when commands are run to add or remove a shell. | Disabled |
| Runtime | systemctl Execution | Detects the usage of the systemctl service manager. | Enabled |
| Runtime | systemd Execution | Detects the usage of the systemd service manager. | Enabled |
