Admission Controller

Note

This feature is offered through SysdigLabs.

Understanding the Admission Controller

Kubernetes' admission controllers help you define and customize which requests are allowed on your cluster. An admission controller intercepts and processes requests to the Kubernetes API prior to persistence of the object, but after the request is authenticated and authorized.

Sysdig's Admission Controller (UI-based) builds upon Kubernetes and enhances the capacity of the image scanner to check images for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), misconfigurations, outdated images, etc., elevating the scan policies from detection to actual prevention. Container images that do not fulfill the configured admission policies will be rejected from the cluster before being assigned to a node and allowed to run.

AC_Assignments.png

Main Features

  • Granular admission policies: Defining a global policy per cluster, but also at the level of particular namespaces or image paths (i.e. registries) Registry and repository whitelist

  • Only allow images that pass the scanning evaluation criteria

  • Only allow images that have been evaluated recently

  • Only allow images that have been scanned before creation is requested to Kubernetes

  • Registry and repository whitelist

  • Scan unscanned requested images immediately (optional)

Usage Steps

The Admission Controller is installed per-cluster. The workflow is straightforward:

Enable in Sysdig Labs

  1. Log in to Sysdig Secure as administrator and select Settings|User Profile.

  2. Under Sysdig Labs, enable the Admission Controller feature and click Save.

    AC_Labs.png

    The links to the Admission Controller pages will appear under Image Scanning in the left-hand navigation.

Installation

The component must be installed on each cluster where you want to use it.

Note

If you have installed the CLI-based version of the Admission Controller, the UI-based version is not backwards-compatible. You will need to uninstall the old version and install the UI-based version instead.

Prerequisites

  • Helm 3

  • Kubernetes 1.16 or higher

Install the Admission Controller

  1. Make sure kubectl is pointing to the target cluster where the Admission Controller will be installed.

  2. Add and synchronize the Helm repository:

    helm repo add sysdig
https://charts.sysdig.com
helm repo update

  3. Install the Admission Controller on the target cluster, e.g.:

    helm install sysdig-admission-controller \
--create-namespace \
--namespace sysdig-admission-controller \
--set sysdig.secureAPIToken=<your Sysdig Secure API token> \
--set clusterName=<name for this cluster in the UI> \
--set sysdig.url=<Sysdig Backend endpoint> \
sysdig/admission-controller

  4. Check that installation was successful in the Sysdig UI. Log in to Sysdig Secure and select Image Scanning>Admission Controller|Policy Assignments.

    AC_disabled2.png

    By default, the cluster shows Connected (healthy), but Disabled (grey dot right of the name). Admission Controllers are disabled by default to avoid accidentally blocking deployment.

Installation Parameters

  • sysdig.secureAPIToken: Sysdig Secure API token as found in the Sysdig UI under Settings/User Profile.

  • clusterName: User-defined name for this cluster that will appear in the admission controller interface in Sysdig's backend

  • Sysdig.url: Sysdig endpoint. This parameter is not necessary for SaaS users in the us-east region (as it is the default value). See SaaS Regions and IP Ranges.

For more information: See the full Admission Controller Helm chart documentation.

Upgrades: How to Uninstall the CLI-based Version

Note

If you have installed the CLI-based version of the Admission Controller, the UI-based version is not backwards-compatible. You will need to uninstall the old version and install the UI-based version instead.

Deploy the following:

$ helm uninstall -n sysdig-admission-controller sysdig-admission-controller

Create Admission Controller Policies

Admission Controller Policies define the criteria to accept or reject a given container image at admission time. Remember that Policies must be assigned to a cluster to be enforced.

  1. Log in as Administrator to Sysdig Secure and select Image Scanning> Admission Controller|Policies.

    The Admission Controller Policies page displays a list of any previously defined policies.

    AC_policies2.png

  2. Click +Policy and enter a meaningful Name and Description.

  3. Define the policy Rules:

    • Evaluation Failure: Whether to reject images that are failing scanning policy evaluation

    • Evaluation Age: Whether to reject images when the evaluation is older than X days. You might set this condition to force a new vulnerability check, for example.

    • Unscanned Image: Whether to reject images that do not have an existing evaluation at admission time. Choose from three options:

      • Ignore: Ignore this condition

      • Reject: Reject the request

      • Reject and Scan: Reject the request and scan the image in parallel.

        Note

        Typically, Kubernetes will retry creating the pending image, so eventually the image will have a valid evaluation and then the other conditions will apply. Since scanning during admission can potentially slow down the deployment process, we don’t recommend this option unless you are confident that most images will have an evaluation before admission (i.e. instrumenting the CI/CD pipelines).

  4. Click Save.

How Policy Conditions are Applied

Policy conditions are applied using an AND operator.

For example, if I set Evaluation Fail to Reject, AND Evaluation Age to Reject for older than 15 days, then if I receive an image with an existing evaluation that is passing, and that evaluation is 20 days old, the request will be rejected.

Assign Admission Controller Policies

  1. Log in as Administrator to Sysdig Secure and select Image Scanning> Admission Controller|Policy Assignment.

    The admission controller policy assignment page displays the list of Kubernetes clusters with Admission Controllers, and their current status.

    AC_Assignments.png

    • Connected/disconnected clusters: Clusters where the admission controller was never installed will not appear at all. Otherwise:

      • Connected: Clusters with a connected and healthy admission controller will show under the “Connected” label. 

      • Disconnected: A Kubernetes cluster that had an admission controller installed, but the admission controller component is not reporting back to the Sysdig backend, will appear under the “Disconnected” label.

    • Enabled/disabled Admission Controllers: You enable/ disable the admission controller for each cluster using the switch on the top right.

      • Enabled: A green dot by the cluster name shows the admission controller is enabled (enforcing)

      • Disabled: A grey dot means the admission controller is disabled.

  2. Click +Add Assignment and enter the basic assignment details.

    A cluster can have multiple assignments at different levels of granularity, and the policies are evaluated from top to bottom. See also: Understanding Evaluation Order.

    • Namespace: Leave blank to match any namespace, or add a relevant entry.

    • Prefix: Leave blank to match any image name, or limit by entering a particular prefix. For example, the redis prefix would match images declared as redis:latest or redis:v2 in the container creation request.

    • Policy: Select a policy from the drop-down list.

  3. Choose Default policy if no other assignment matches: Select to Allow by default or Reject by default.

    Warning

    Be very careful with the Reject by default option. Be sure to explicitly allow critical workloads in your system.

  4. Click Save.

  5. Optional: Drag the new assignment to a different position in the evaluation list if it should be applied before another assignment.

Understanding Evaluation Order

Assignments are evaluated from top to bottom. The first match dictates which policy will be applied,. The default cluster action will be applied if no assignment matches.

For example:

Assignment 1:  Namespace kube-system; any Image path uses Policy1

Assignment 2: All namespaces; Image path starts with quay.io/myimage uses Policy2

Default policy: If no other assignment matches, them Reject

Then:

  • Requesting to create a container with path docker.io/myimage in the kube-system namespace will apply Policy1

  • Requesting to create a container with path quay.io/myimage in the kube-system namespace will apply Policy1

  • Requesting to create a container with path quay.io/myimage in the mynamespace namespace will apply Policy2

  • Requesting to create a container with path docker.io/myimage in the mynamespace namespace will be Rejected.

Enable/Disable the Admission Controller

It is recommended to develop the policies and assignments while the Admission Controller is Disabled. Enable on a staging cluster to test before enabling in production.

When you are happy with the defined behavior:

  1. Log in as Administrator to Sysdig Secure and select Image Scanning> Admission Controller|Policy Assignment.

  2. Select the relevant cluster from the left side menu.

  3. Slide the Admission Controller to Enabled.

  4. Monitor any resulting events as usual.

Note

The Disable function can also be used to quickly stop the Admission Controller if unexpected behavior is detected that adversely affects the function of a cluster.