More Info:
Allow Kubelet to manage iptables.Risk Level
HighAddress
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)
- 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
- On every worker node, check how kubelet is configured and whether the flag is already set:
- If using the kubelet config file (preferred), edit
/etc/kubernetes/kubelet/kubelet-config.jsonon every worker node to setmakeIPTablesUtilChainstotrue(create or update the field in the top-level config object):
- Ensure the systemd drop-in does not override this flag; on every worker node, remove any
--make-iptables-util-chainsargument from the kubelet args file:
- If instead you are using only executable arguments (no kubelet config file), edit the kubelet args file on every worker node to explicitly set the flag:
KUBELET_ARGS=... (or equivalent), ensure it includes:- On every worker node, reload systemd and restart kubelet so the change takes effect (this will restart the kubelet process):
- Verify on every worker node that kubelet is now running with
--make-iptables-util-chains=trueor that the config file contains"makeIPTablesUtilChains": true:
Using kubectl
Using kubectl
kubectl cannot change the kubelet’s
--make-iptables-util-chains setting because it is a host-level configuration controlled by files and systemd units on every worker node (for example /etc/kubernetes/kubelet/kubelet-config.json or /etc/systemd/system/kubelet.service.d/10-kubelet-args.conf). To remediate this finding, follow the guidance in the Manual Steps section on each worker node.Automation
Automation

