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The kube-proxy kubeconfig file should be owned by root:root to ensure that only the root user can read or modify it. Incorrect ownership could allow unauthorized users to tamper with proxy configuration.

Risk Level

Medium

Address

Security

Compliance Standards

  • CIS GKE

Triage and Remediation

Remediation

Manual Steps

  1. On every worker node, confirm the kubelet kubeconfig file exists and check its current ownership:
  2. On every worker node, change the ownership of the kubeconfig file to root:root:
  3. (Optional, for hardening) On every worker node, restrict permissions to read/write for root only:
  4. On every worker node, verify the ownership (and optionally permissions) are correct:
    Expected ownership: root:root (and permissions such as 600 if you applied step 3).
kubectl cannot modify host-level file ownership, so it cannot be used to fix the ownership of /var/lib/kubelet/kubeconfig on worker nodes. This remediation must be performed directly on each node’s filesystem (over SSH or your node management tooling); see the Manual Steps section for the exact commands.