More Info:
Ensure that the kubelet.conf file has permissions of 644 or more restrictiveRisk Level
MediumAddress
SecurityCompliance Standards
- APRA CPS 234 (Australia)
- BSI C5 (Germany)
- Brazil LGPD
- CCPA / CPRA (California)
- CIS Critical Security Controls v8
- CIS EKS
- CMMC 2.0
- CSA Cloud Controls Matrix v4
- DPDPA
- Digital Operational Resilience Act (EU)
- Essential 8
- ISO/IEC 27017
- ISO/IEC 27018
- ISO/IEC 27701
- KSA PDPL
- MAS Technology Risk Management (Singapore)
- MITRE ATT&CK (Cloud)
- NIS2 Directive
- NIST SP 800-171
- NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500
- SWIFT Customer Security Controls Framework
- Sarbanes-Oxley IT General Controls
- UK NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework
Triage and Remediation
- Remediation
Remediation
Manual Steps
Manual Steps
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On every worker node, check the current permissions of the kubeconfig file:
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If the permissions are more permissive than 644 (e.g., 664, 666, 600 is fine), set them to 644:
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Confirm the file is owned by the appropriate user and group (typically root:root). If needed, correct it:
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Re-verify that the permissions are now 644 or more restrictive:
Using kubectl
Using kubectl
kubectl cannot modify file permissions on worker node hosts, including
/etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf. This finding must be remediated directly on each worker node’s filesystem (host-level configuration); follow the Manual Steps section on those nodes to apply the fix.Automation
Automation

