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Scenario #251
Security
K8s v1.22, GKE
Insufficient RBAC Permissions for Cluster Admin
A cluster administrator was mistakenly granted insufficient RBAC permissions, preventing them from performing essential management tasks.
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What Happened
A new RBAC policy was applied, which inadvertently restricted the cluster admin’s ability to manage critical components such as deployments, services, and namespaces. This caused operational issues and hindered the ability to scale or fix issues in the cluster.
Diagnosis Steps
- 1Audited the RBAC policy and identified restrictive permissions applied to the admin role.
- 2Attempted various management tasks and encountered "forbidden" errors when accessing critical cluster resources.
Root Cause
Misconfiguration in the RBAC policy prevented the cluster admin from accessing necessary resources.
Fix/Workaround
• Updated the RBAC policy to ensure that the cluster admin role had the correct permissions to manage all resources.
• Implemented a more granular RBAC policy review process to avoid future issues.Lessons Learned
Always test RBAC configurations in a staging environment to avoid accidental misconfigurations.
How to Avoid
- 1Implement automated RBAC policy checks and enforce least privilege principles.
- 2Regularly review and update RBAC roles to ensure they align with operational needs.