Security bulletins archive

This page contains a historical archive of all security bulletins prior to 2020 for the following products:

To view the most recent security bulletins, see the Security bulletins page.

GKE security bulletins

November 14, 2019

Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Description Severity Notes

Kubernetes has disclosed a security issue in the kubernetes-csi external-provisioner, external-snapshotter, and external-resizer sidecars that impacts most versions of the sidecars bundled in Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers. For further details, see the Kubernetes disclosure.

What should I do?
This vulnerability does not affect any managed GKE components. You may be affected if you manage your own CSI drivers in GKE Alpha clusters running GKE version 1.12 or higher. If you are affected, check with your CSI driver vendor for upgrade instructions.

What vulnerabilities are addressed by this patch?
CVE-2019-11255: This CVE is a vulnerability in the kubernetes-csi external-provisioner, external-snapshotter, and external-resizer sidecars which can allow unauthorized volume data access or mutation. This impacts most versions of the sidecars bundled in CSI drivers.

Medium

CVE-2019-11255

November 12, 2019

Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Description Severity Notes

Intel has disclosed CVEs that potentially allow interactions between speculative execution and microarchitectural state to expose data. For further details, see the Intel disclosure.

The host infrastructure that runs Kubernetes Engine isolates customer workloads. Unless you are running untrusted code inside your own multi-tenant GKE clusters and using N2, M2 or C2 nodes, no further action is required. For GKE instances on N1 nodes, no new action is required.

If you are running GKE on VMware, exposure is hardware dependent. Please compare your infrastructure with the Intel disclosure.

What should I do?

You are only impacted if you are using node pools with N2, M2, or C2 nodes and those nodes run untrusted code inside your own multi-tenant GKE clusters.

Restarting your nodes applies the patch. The easiest way to restart all nodes in your node pool is to use the upgrade operation to force a restart across all of the affected node pool.

What vulnerabilities are addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerabilities:

CVE-2019-11135: This CVE is also known as TSX Async Abort (TAA). TAA provides another avenue for data exfiltration using the same microarchitectural data structures that were exploited by Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS).

CVE-2018-12207 This is a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability affecting virtual machine hosts allowing a malicious guest to crash an unprotected host. This CVE is also known as "Machine Check Error on Page Size Change." This does not affect GKE.

Medium

CVE-2019-11135
CVE-2018-12207

October 22, 2019

Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Description Severity Notes

A vulnerability was recently discovered in the Go programming language, described in CVE-2019-16276. This vulnerability potentially impacts Kubernetes configurations using an Authenticating Proxy. For further details, see the Kubernetes disclosure.

Kubernetes Engine does not allow configuration of an Authenticating Proxy, so is not affected by this vulnerability.

None

CVE-2019-16276

October 16, 2019

Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-24
Description Severity Notes

2019-10-24 Update: Patched versions are now available in all zones.


A vulnerability was recently discovered in Kubernetes, described in CVE-2019-11253, which allows any user authorized to make POST requests to execute a remote Denial-of-Service attack on a Kubernetes API server. The Kubernetes Product Security Committee (PSC) released additional information on this vulnerability which can be found here.

GKE Clusters that use Master Authorized Networks and Private clusters with no public endpoint mitigate this vulnerability.

What should I do?

We recommend that you upgrade your cluster to a patch version containing the fix as soon as they are available. We expect them to be available in all zones with the GKE release planned for the week of October 14th.

The patch versions which will contain the mitigation are listed below:

  • 1.12.10-gke.15
  • 1.13.11-gke.5
  • 1.14.7-gke.10
  • 1.15.4-gke.15
What vulnerabilities are addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerabilities:

CVE-2019-11253 is a Denial-of-Service (DoS) vulnerability.

High

CVE-2019-11253

September 16, 2019

Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Description Severity Notes

This bulletin has been updated since its original publication.

The Go programming language recently discovered new security vulnerabilities CVE-2019-9512 and CVE-2019-9514, which are Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities. In GKE, this could allow a user to craft malicious requests that consume excessive amounts of CPU in the Kubernetes API server, potentially reducing the availability of the cluster control plane. For further details, see the Go programming language disclosure.

What should I do?

We recommend that you upgrade your cluster to the latest patch version, which contains the mitigation to this vulnerability, as soon as they are available. We expect them to be available in all zones with the next GKE release, according to the release schedule.

The patch versions which will contain the mitigation are listed below:

  • October 16, 2019 Update: 1.12.10-gke.15
  • 1.13.10-gke.0
  • 1.14.6-gke.1
What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerabilities:

CVE-2019-9512 and CVE-2019-9514 are Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities.

High

CVE-2019-9512
CVE-2019-9514

September 5, 2019

Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05

The bulletin for the fix for the vulnerability documented in the bulletin of May 31, 2019 is updated.

August 22, 2019

Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22

The bulletin for August 5, 2019 has been updated. The fix for the vulnerability documented in the earlier bulletin is available.

August 8, 2019

Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08

The bulletin for August 5, 2019 has been updated. We expect the fix for the vulnerability documented in that bulletin to be available in the next release of GKE.

August 5, 2019

Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-09
Description Severity Notes

This bulletin has been updated since its original publication.

Kubernetes recently discovered a vulnerability, CVE-2019-11247, which allows cluster-scoped custom resource instances to be acted on as if they were namespaced objects existing in all Namespaces. This means user and service accounts with only namespace-level RBAC permissions can interact with cluster-scoped custom resources. Exploiting this vulnerability requires the attacker to have privileges to access the resource in any namespace.

What should I do?

We recommend that you upgrade your cluster to the latest patch version, which contains the mitigation to this vulnerability, as soon as they are available. We expect them to be available in all zones with the next GKE release. The patch versions which will contain the mitigation are listed below:

  • 1.11.10-gke.6
  • 1.12.9-gke.13
  • 1.13.7-gke.19
  • 1.14.3-gke.10 (Rapid Channel)
What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability: CVE-2019-11247.

Medium

CVE-2019-11247

July 3, 2019

Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Description Severity Notes

A patched version of kubectl to address CVE-2019-11246 is now available with gcloud 253.0.0. See the June 25, 2019 security bulletin for more information.

Note: The patch is not available in kubectl 1.11.10.

High

CVE-2019-11246

July 3, 2019

Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-07-03
Description Severity Notes
July 3, 2019 Update

At the time of our last update, patches for versions 1.11.9 and 1.11.10 were not yet available. We have now released 1.11.10-gke.5 as an upgrade target for both 1.11 versions.

At this time, GKE masters have been patched, and the Google infrastructure that runs Kubernetes Engine has been patched and is protected from this vulnerability.

1.11 masters will soon be deprecated and are scheduled to automatically upgrade to 1.12 the week of July 8, 2019. You may choose any of the following suggested actions to get nodes onto a patched version:

  • Perform the node upgrade to 1.11.10-gke.5 by Jul 8, 2019. After this date, 1.11 versions will begin to be removed from the available list of upgrade targets.
  • Enable auto upgrades on 1.11 nodes and allow them to be upgraded when the masters are upgraded to 1.12.
  • Manually upgrade both masters and nodes to a fixed 1.12 version.

The original bulletin from June 24, 2019 follows:


June 24, 2019 Update

As of 2019-06-22 21:40 UTC we have made the following patched Kubernetes versions available. Masters between Kubernetes versions 1.11.0 and 1.13.6 will be automatically updated to a patched version. If you are not running a version compatible with this patch, upgrade to a compatible master version (listed below) before upgrading your nodes.

Due to the severity of these vulnerabilities, whether you have node auto-upgrade enabled or not, we recommend that you manually upgrade both your nodes and masters to one of these versions as soon as possible.

The patched verions:

  • 1.11.8-gke.10
  • 1.12.7-gke.24
  • 1.12.8-gke.10
  • 1.13.6-gke.13

The original bulletin from June 18, 2019 follows:


Netflix has recently disclosed three TCP vulnerabilities in Linux kernels:

These CVEs are collectively referred to as NFLX-2019-001.

Unpatched Linux kernels may be vulnerable to a remotely triggered denial of service attack. Google Kubernetes Engine nodes that send or receive untrusted network traffic are affected, and we recommend that you follow these mitigation steps below to protect your workloads.

Kubernetes masters
  • Kubernetes masters using Authorized Networks to limit traffic to trusted networks are unaffected.

  • Masters for GKE clusters, which are managed by Google, will be patched automatically in the coming days. No customer action is required.

Kubernetes nodes

Nodes that limit traffic to trusted networks are unaffected. This would be a cluster with the following:

  • Nodes firewalled from untrusted networks or with no public IPs (Private clusters)
  • Clusters without public LoadBalancer Services

Google is preparing a permanent mitigation for these vulnerabilities that will be made available as a new node version. We will update this bulletin and send an email to all GKE customers when the permanent fix is made available.

Until the permanent fix is available, we've created a Kubernetes DaemonSet that implements mitigations by modifying the host iptables configuration.

What should I do?

Apply the Kubernetes DaemonSet to all nodes in your cluster by running the following command. This adds an iptables rule to the existing iptables rules on the node to mitigate the vulnerability. Run the command once per cluster per Google Cloud project.

kubectl apply -f \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform\
/k8s-node-tools/master/drop-small-mss/drop-small-mss.yaml
      

Once a patched node version is available and you have upgraded all potentially-affected nodes, you can remove the DaemonSet using the following command. Run the command once per cluster per Google Cloud project.

kubectl delete -f \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform\
/k8s-node-tools/master/drop-small-mss/drop-small-mss.yaml
      
High
Medium
Medium
CVE-2019-11477
CVE-2019-11478
CVE-2019-11479

June 25, 2019

Description Severity Notes

2019-07-03 Update: This patch is available in gcloud 253.0.0, for kubectl versions 1.12.9, 1.13.6, 1.14.2 and newer releases.

Note: The patch is not available in 1.11.10.


Kubernetes recently discovered a vulnerability, CVE-2019-11246, which allows an attacker with access to a kubectl cp operation and code execution inside a container to modify files on the host. This exploit potentially allows an attacker to replace or create a file in the host file system. For further details, see the Kubernetes disclosure.

All Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) gcloud versions are affected by this vulnerability, and we recommend that you upgrade to the latest patch version of gcloud when it becomes available. An upcoming patch version will include a mitigation for this vulnerability.

What should I do?

A patched version of kubectl will be available in an upcoming gcloud release. You can also upgrade kubectl directly yourself.

Track the availability of this patch in the gcloud release notes.

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The vulnerability CVE-2019-11246 allows an attacker with access to a kubectl cp operation and code execution inside a container to modify files on the host. This exploit potentially allows an attacker to replace or create a file in the host file system

High

CVE-2019-11246

June 18, 2019

Description Severity Notes

Docker recently discovered a vulnerability, CVE-2018-15664, that allows an attacker that can execute code inside a container to hijack an externally-initiated docker cp operation. This exploit potentially allows an attacker to change where a file is being written, to an arbitrary location in the host file system.

All Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) nodes running Docker are affected by this vulnerability, and we recommend that you upgrade to the latest patch version once available. An upcoming patch version will include a mitigation for this vulnerability.

All Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) masters older than version 1.12.7 are running Docker and are affected by this vulnerability. On GKE, users do not have access to docker cp on the master and so the risk of this vulnerability is limited for GKE masters.

What should I do?

Only nodes running Docker are affected, and only when a docker cp (or API equivalent) command that can be hijacked is issued. This is expected to be fairly unusual in a Kubernetes environment. Nodes running COS with containerd are not affected.

In order to upgrade your nodes, you must first upgrade your master to the patched version. When the patch is available, you can either initiate a master upgrade or wait for Google to auto-upgrade the master. The patch will be available in Docker 18.09.7, included in an upcoming GKE patch. This patch will only be available for GKE versions 1.13 and above.

We will upgrade cluster masters to the patched version automatically, at the regular upgrade cadence. You can also initiate a master upgrade yourself after the patched version becomes available.

We will update this bulletin with the versions containing a patch once available. Track the availability of these patches in the release notes.

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability:

The vulnerability CVE-2018-15664 allows an attacker that can execute code inside a container to hijack an externally-initiated docker cp operation. This exploit potentially allows an attacker to change where a file is being written, to an arbitrary location in the host file system.

High

May 31, 2019

Description Severity Notes

This bulletin has been updated since its original publication.

August 2, 2019 Update

At the time of the initial bulletin, only 1.13.6-gke.0 through 1.13.6-gke.5 were impacted. Due to a regression all 1.13.6.x versions are now affected. If you are runnuing 1.13.6 upgrade to 1.13.7 as soon as possible.

The Kubernetes project has disclosed CVE-2019-11245 in kubelet v1.13.6 and v1.14.2, which can cause containers to run as UID 0 (typically maps to the root user), even if a different user is specified in the container image. If your containers run as a non-root user and you are running node version 1.13.6-gke.0 through 1.13.6-gke.6, we recommend you set RunAsUser on all Pods in the cluster whose containers should not run as UID 0.

If a non-root USER value is specified (for example, by setting the value of USER in a Dockerfile), unexpected behavior occurs. When a container runs for the first time on a node, it correctly respects the specified UID. However, due to this defect, on the second run (and subsequent runs) the container runs as UID 0 regardless of the specified UID. This is usually an undesired escalated privilege, and can lead to unexpected application behavior.

How do I know if I'm running an impacted version?

Run the following command to list all nodes and their kubelet version:

kubectl get nodes -o=jsonpath='{range .items[*]}'\
'{.status.nodeInfo.machineID}'\
'{"\t"}{.status.nodeInfo.kubeletVersion}{"\n"}{end}'

If the output lists kubelet versions listed below, your nodes are impacted:

  • v1.13.6
  • v1.14.2
How do I know if my specific configuration is affected?

If your containers run as a non-root user, and you are running node version 1.13.6-gke.0 through 1.13.6-gke.6 you are impacted except in the following cases:

  • Pods that specify a valid non-root value for the runAsUser PodSecurityContext are unaffected and continue to work as expected.
  • PodSecurityPolicies that enforce a runAsUser setting are also unaffected and continue to work as expected.
  • Pods that specify mustRunAsNonRoot:true will not start as UID 0, but will fail to start when impacted by this issue.
What should I do?

Set the RunAsUser Security Context on all Pods in the cluster that should not run as UID 0. You can apply this configuration using a PodSecurityPolicy.

Medium CVE-2019-11245

May 14, 2019

Description Severity Notes

2019-06-11 Update: The patch is available in 1.11.10-gke.4, 1.12.8-gke.6, and 1.13.6-gke.5 released the week of 2019-05-28, and newer releases.

Intel has disclosed the following CVEs:

These CVEs are collectively referred to as Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS). These vulnerabilities potentially allow data to be exposed via the interaction of speculative execution with microarchitectural state. For further details, see the Intel disclosure.

The host infrastructure that runs Kubernetes Engine isolates customer workloads from each other. Unless you are running untrusted code inside your own multi-tenant GKE clusters, you are not impacted.

For customers running untrusted code in their own multi-tenant services within Kubernetes Engine, this is a particularly severe vulnerability. To mitigate it in Kubernetes Engine, disable Hyper-Threading in your nodes. Only Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) nodes using multiple CPUs are affected by these vulnerabilities. Note that n1-standard-1 (the GKE default), g1-small and f1-micro VMs only expose 1 vCPU to the guest environment so there is no need to disable Hyper-Threading.

Additional protections to enable flush functionality will be included in an upcoming patch version. We will upgrade masters and nodes with auto-upgrade to the patched version automatically in the coming weeks, at the regular upgrade cadence. The patch alone is not sufficient to mitigate exposure to this vulnerability. See below for recommended actions.

If you are running GKE on prem, you may be affected depending on the hardware you are using. Please refer to the Intel disclosure.

What should I do?

Unless you are running untrusted code inside your own multi-tenant GKE clusters, you are not impacted.

For nodes in Kubernetes Engine, create new node pools with Hyper-Threading disabled and reschedule your workloads onto the new nodes.

Note that n1-standard-1, g1-small, and f1-micro VMs only expose 1 vCPU to the guest environment so there is no need to disable Hyper-Threading.

Warning:
  • Disabling Hyper-Threading might have severe performance impact on your clusters and application. Please ensure that this is acceptable before deploying this to your production clusters.
  • Hyper-threading can be disabled at the GKE node pool level by deploying a DaemonSet. However, deploying this DaemonSet will result in all of your nodes in the node pool rebooting at the same time. Therefore, it is recommended to create a new node pool in your cluster, deploy the DaemonSet to disable Hyper-Threading in that node pool, and then migrate your workloads to the new node pool.

To create a new node pool with Hyper-Threading disabled:

  1. Create a new node pool in your cluster with the node label cloud.google.com/gke-smt-disabled=true:
    gcloud container node-pools create smt-disabled --cluster=[CLUSTER_NAME] \
        --node-labels=cloud.google.com/gke-smt-disabled=true
  2. Deploy the DaemonSet to this new node pool. The DaemonSet will only run on nodes with the cloud.google.com/gke-smt-disabled=true label. It will disable Hyper-Threading and then reboot the node.
    kubectl create -f \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/\
    k8s-node-tools/master/disable-smt/gke/disable-smt.yaml
  3. Ensure that the DaemonSet pods are in running state.
    kubectl get pods --selector=name=disable-smt -n kube-system

    You should get a response similar to:

    NAME                READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
    
    disable-smt-2xnnc   1/1       Running   0          6m
  4. Check that "SMT has been disabled" appears in the logs of the pods.
    kubectl logs disable-smt-2xnnc disable-smt -n kube-system

You must keep the DaemonSet running on the nodepools so that new nodes created in the pool will have the changes applied automatically. Node creations can be triggered by node auto repair, manual or auto upgrade, and auto-scaling.

To re-enable Hyper-Threading, you will need to recreate the node pool without deploying the provided DaemonSet, and migrate your workloads to the new node pool.

We also recommend that you manually upgrade your nodes once the patch becomes available. In order to upgrade, you must first upgrade your master to the newest version. GKE masters will automatically be upgraded at the regular upgrade cadence.

We will update this bulletin with the versions containing a patch once available.

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerabilities:

CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, CVE-2018-12130, CVE-2019-11091: These vulnerabilities exploit speculative execution. These CVEs are collectively referred to as Microarchitectural Data Sampling. These vulnerabilities potentially allow data to be exposed via the interaction of speculative execution with microarchitectural state.
Medium

April 5, 2019

Description Severity Notes

Recently, the security vulnerabilities CVE-2019-9900 and CVE-2019-9901. were discovered in Envoy.

Istio embeds Envoy, and these vulnerabilities allow Istio policy to be bypassed in some cases.

If you have enabled Istio on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), you may be affected by these vulnerabilities. We recommend upgrading your affected clusters to the latest patch version as soon as possible, and upgrading your Istio sidecars (instructions below).

What should I do?

Due to the severity of these vulnerabilities, whether you have node auto-upgrades enabled or not, we recommend that you:

  1. Manually upgrade your cluster as soon as the patch becomes available.
  2. Upgrade your sidecars by following the sidecar upgrade documentation.

The patched versions will be made available for all GKE projects before 7:00 PM PDT today.

This patch will be available in the below GKE versions. New clusters will use the patched version by default when announced on the GKE security bulletins page, expected on April 15th, 2019; if you create a new cluster before then, you must specify the patched version for it to use. GKE customers who have node auto-upgrades enabled, and who do not manually upgrade, will have their nodes auto-upgraded to patched versions in the following week.

Patched Versions:

  • 1.10.12-gke.14
  • 1.11.6-gke.16
  • 1.11.7-gke.18
  • 1.11.8-gke.6
  • 1.12.6-gke.10
  • 1.13.4-gke.10

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerabilities:

CVE-2019-9900 and CVE-2019-9901. You can read more about them on the Istio blog.

High

March 1, 2019

Description Severity Notes

2019-03-22 Update: This patch is available in Kubernetes 1.11.8-gke.4, 1.13.4-gke.1, and newer releases. The patch is not yet available in 1.12. Track the availability of these patches in the release notes.

Kubernetes recently discovered a new denial of service vulnerability CVE-2019-1002100, allowing a user authorized to make patch requests to craft a malicious "json-patch" request that consumes excessive amounts of CPU and memory in the Kubernetes API server, potentially reducing the availability of the cluster control plane. For further details, see the Kubernetes disclosure. All Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) masters are affected by these vulnerabilities. An upcoming patch version will include a mitigation for this vulnerability. We will upgrade cluster masters to the patched version automatically in the coming weeks, at the regular upgrade cadence.

What should I do?

No action is required. GKE masters will automatically be upgraded at the regular upgrade cadence. If you wish to upgrade your master sooner, you can manually initiate a master upgrade.

We will update this bulletin with the versions containing a patch. Note that the patch will only be available in versions 1.11+, not also in 1.10.

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability:

The vulnerability CVE-2019-1002100 allows a user to specially craft a patch of type "json-patch" that consumes excessive amounts of CPU in the Kubernetes API server, potentially reducing the availability of the cluster control plane.

Medium CVE-2019-1002100

February 11, 2019 (runc)

Description Severity Notes

The Open Containers Initiative (OCI) recently discovered a new security vulnerability CVE-2019-5736 in runc, allowing container escape to obtain root privileges on the host node.

Your Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Ubuntu nodes are affected by these vulnerabilities, and we recommend that you upgrade to the latest patch version as soon as possible, as we detail below.

What should I do?

In order to upgrade your nodes, you must first upgrade your master to the newest version. This patch is available in Kubernetes 1.10.12-gke.7, 1.11.6-gke.11, 1.11.7-gke.4, 1.12.5-gke.5 and newer releases. Track the availability of these patches in the release notes.

Note that only Ubuntu nodes in GKE are affected. Nodes running COS are not affected.

Note that the new version of runc has increased memory usage and may require updating memory allocated to containers if you have set low memory limits (< 16MB).

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability:

CVE-2019-5736 describes a vulnerability in runc that allows a malicious container to (with minimal user interaction in the form of an exec) overwrite the host runc binary and thus gain root-level code execution on the host node. Containers not running as root are unaffected. This is rated as a 'High' severity vulnerability.

High CVE-2019-5736

February 11, 2019 (Go)

Description Severity Notes

2019-02-25 Update: The patch is not available in 1.11.7-gke.4 as previously communicated. If you are running 1.11.7, you can: downgrade to 1.11.6, upgrade to 1.12, or wait until the next 1.11.7 patch available the week of 2019-03-04.

The Go programming language recently discovered a new security vulnerability CVE-2019-6486, which is a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability in the crypto/elliptic implementations of the P-521 and P-384 elliptic curves. In Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), this could allow a user to craft malicious requests that consume excessive amounts of CPU in the Kubernetes API server, potentially reducing the availability of the cluster control plane. For further details, see the Go programming language disclosure.

All Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) masters are affected by these Vulnerabilities. The latest patch version Includes a mitigation for this vulnerability. We will upgrade cluster masters to the patched version automatically in the coming weeks, at the regular upgrade cadence.

What should I do?

No action is required. GKE masters will automatically be upgraded at the regular upgrade cadence. If you wish to upgrade your master sooner, you can manually initiate a master upgrade.

This patch is available in GKE 1.10.12-gke.7, 1.11.6-gke.11, 1.11.7-gke.4, 1.12.5-gke.5, and newer releases.

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability:

CVE-2019-6486 is a vulnerability in the crypto/elliptic implementations of the P-521 and P-384 elliptic curves. This allows a user to craft inputs that consume excessive amounts of CPU.

High CVE-2019-6486

December 3, 2018

Description Severity Notes

Kubernetes recently discovered a new security vulnerability CVE-2018-1002105, allowing a user with relatively low privileges to bypass authorization to the kubelet's APIs, giving the ability to execute arbitrary operations for any Pod on any node in the cluster. For further details, see the Kubernetes disclosure. All Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) masters were affected by these vulnerabilities, and we have already upgraded clusters to the latest patch versions. No action is required.

What should I do?

No action is required. GKE masters have already been upgraded.

This patch is available in GKE 1.9.7-gke.11, 1.10.6-gke.11, 1.10.7-gke.11, 1.10.9-gke.5, and 1.11.2-gke.18 and newer releases.

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability:

The vulnerability CVE-2018-1002105 allows a user with relatively low privileges to bypass authorization to the kubelet's APIs. This gives a user authorized to make upgradable requests to escalate and make arbitrary calls to the kubelet's API. This is rated as a Critical vulnerability in Kubernetes. Given some details in GKE's implementation that prevented the unauthenticated escalation path, this is rated as a High vulnerability.

High CVE-2018-1002105

November 13, 2018

Description

2018-11-16 Update: The revocation and rotation of all potentially impacted tokens is complete. No further action is required.

Google recently discovered an issue in the Calico Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin which can, in certain configurations, log sensitive information. This issue is tracked under Tigera Technical Advisory TTA-2018-001.

  • When running with debug-level logging, the Calico CNI plugin will write Kubernetes API client configuration into the logs.
  • The Calico CNI will also write the Kubernetes API token to the logs at the info level if the "k8s_auth_token" field is set on the CNI network configuration.
  • Additionally, when running with debug-level logging, if the service account token is explicitly set, either in the Calico configuration file read by Calico, or as environment variables used by Calico, then Calico components (calico/node, felix, CNI) will write this information to the log files.

These tokens have the following permissions:

bgpconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org     [create get list update watch]
bgppeers.crd.projectcalico.org              [create get list update watch]
clusterinformations.crd.projectcalico.org   [create get list update watch]
felixconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org   [create get list update watch]
globalbgpconfigs.crd.projectcalico.org      [create get list update watch]
globalfelixconfigs.crd.projectcalico.org    [create get list update watch]
globalnetworkpolicies.crd.projectcalico.org [create get list update watch]
globalnetworksets.crd.projectcalico.org     [create get list update watch]
hostendpoints.crd.projectcalico.org         [create get list update watch]
ippools.crd.projectcalico.org               [create get list update watch]
networkpolicies.crd.projectcalico.org       [create get list update watch]
nodes                                       [get list update watch]
pods                                        [get list watch patch]
namespaces                                  [get list watch]
networkpolicies.extensions                  [get list watch]
endpoints                                   [get]
services                                    [get]
pods/status                                 [update]
networkpolicies.networking.k8s.io           [watch list]
      

Google Kubernetes Engine Clusters with a Cluster Network Policy and Stackdriver Logging enabled, logged Calico service account tokens to Stackdriver. Clusters without Network Policy enabled are unaffected.

We have deployed a fix that migrates the Calico CNI plugin to only log at the warning level, and use a new service account. The patched calico code will be deployed in a later release.

Over the course of the next week, we will perform a rolling revocation of any potentially impacted tokens. This bulletin will be updated when the revocation is complete. No further action on your part is required. (This rotation was completed on 2018-11-16)

If you wish to rotate these tokens immediately you can run the following command, the new secret for the service account should be re-created automatically within a few seconds:

kubectl get sa --namespace kube-system calico -o template --template '{{(index .secrets 0).name}}' | xargs kubectl delete secret --namespace kube-system
     

Detection

GKE logs all access to the API server. To determine if a Calico token was used from outside Google Cloud's expected IP range, you can run the following Stackdriver query. Please note this will only return records for calls made from outside GCP's network. You should customize it as needed for your specific environment.

resource.type="k8s_cluster"
protoPayload.authenticationInfo.principalEmail="system:serviceaccount:kube-system:calico"
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "8.34.208.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "8.35.192.0/21")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "8.35.200.0/23")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "108.59.80.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "108.170.192.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "108.170.208.0/21")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "108.170.216.0/22")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "108.170.220.0/23")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "108.170.222.0/24")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.224.0.0/13")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "162.216.148.0/22")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "162.222.176.0/21")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "173.255.112.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "192.158.28.0/22")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "199.192.112.0/22")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "199.223.232.0/22")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "199.223.236.0/23")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "23.236.48.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "23.251.128.0/19")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.204.0.0/14")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.208.0.0/13")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "107.167.160.0/19")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "107.178.192.0/18")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "146.148.2.0/23")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "146.148.4.0/22")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "146.148.8.0/21")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "146.148.16.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "146.148.32.0/19")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "146.148.64.0/18")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.203.0.0/17")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.203.128.0/18")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.203.192.0/19")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.203.240.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "130.211.8.0/21")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "130.211.16.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "130.211.32.0/19")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "130.211.64.0/18")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "130.211.128.0/17")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "104.154.0.0/15")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "104.196.0.0/14")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "208.68.108.0/23")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.184.0.0/14")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.188.0.0/15")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.202.0.0/16")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.190.0.0/17")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.190.128.0/18")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.190.192.0/19")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.235.224.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.192.0.0/14")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.196.0.0/15")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.198.0.0/16")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.199.0.0/17")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.199.128.0/18")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.200.0.0/15")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "2600:1900::/35")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.190.224.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.232.0.0/15")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.234.0.0/16")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.235.0.0/17")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.235.192.0/20")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.236.0.0/14")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.240.0.0/15")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.203.232.0/21")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "130.211.4.0/22")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.220.0.0/14")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.242.0.0/15")
NOT ip_in_net(protoPayload.requestMetadata.callerIp, "35.244.0.0/14")
      

August 14, 2018

Description Severity Notes

Intel has disclosed the following CVEs:

These CVEs are collectively referred to as "L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF)".

These L1TF vulnerabilities exploit speculative execution by attacking the configuration of processor-level data structures. "L1" refers to the Level-1 Data cache (L1D), a small on-core resource used to accelerate memory access.

Read the Google Cloud blog post for more details on these vulnerabilities and Compute Engine's mitigations.

Google Kubernetes Engine impact

The infrastructure that runs Kubernetes Engine and isolates customer Clusters and Nodes from each other is protected against known attacks.

Kubernetes Engine node pools that use Google's Container-Optimized OS image, and who have auto-upgrade enabled, will be automatically updated to patched versions of our COS image as they become available starting the week of 2018-08-20.

Kubernetes Engine node pools that do not have auto-upgrade enabled must manually upgrade as patched versions of our COS image become available.

High

August 6, 2018; last updated: September 5th, 2018

Description Severity Notes

2018-09-05 Update

CVE-2018-5391 was recently disclosed. As with CVE-2018-5390, this is a kernel-level networking vulnerability that increases the effectiveness of denial of service (DoS) attacks against vulnerable systems. The main difference is that CVE-2018-5391 is exploitable over IP connections. We updated this bulletin to cover both of these vulnerabilities.

Description

CVE-2018-5390 ("SegmentSmack") describes a kernel-level networking vulnerability that increases the effectiveness of denial of service (DoS) attacks against vulnerable systems over TCP connections.

CVE-2018-5391 ("FragmentSmack") describes a kernel-level networkingvulnerability that increases the effectiveness of denial of service (DoS) attacks against vulnerable systems over IP connections.

Google Kubernetes Engine impact

As of 2018-08-11, all Kubernetes Engine masters are protected against both vulnerabilities. Also, all Kubernetes Engine clusters that are configured to automatically upgrade are also protected against both vulnerabilities. Kubernetes Engine node pools that are not configured to automatically upgrade, and were last manually upgraded before 2018-08-11, are affected by both vulnerabilities.

Patched versions

Due to the severity of this vulnerability, we recommend you manually upgrade your nodes as soon as the patch becomes available.

High

May 30, 2018

Description Severity Notes

A vulnerability was recently discovered in Git which may allow escalation of privileges in Kubernetes if unprivileged users are allowed to create Pods with gitRepo volumes. The CVE is identified with the tag CVE-2018-11235.

Am I affected?

This vulnerability affects you if all of the following are true:

  • Untrusted users can create Pods (or trigger Pod creation).
  • Pods created by untrusted users have restrictions preventing host root access (for example, via PodSecurityPolicy).
  • Pods created by untrusted users are allowed to use the gitRepo volume type.

All Kubernetes Engine nodes are vulnerable.

What should I do?

Forbid the use of the gitRepo volume type. To forbid gitRepo volumes with PodSecurityPolicy, omit gitRepo from the volumes allowlist in your PodSecurityPolicy.

Equivalent gitRepo volume behavior can be achieved by cloning a git repository into an EmptyDir volume from an initContainer:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: git-repo-example
spec:
  initContainers:
    # This container clones the desired git repo to the EmptyDir volume.
    - name: git-clone
      image: alpine/git # Any image with git will do
      args:
        - clone
        - --single-branch
        - --
        - https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes # Your repo
        - /repo # Put it in the volume
      securityContext:
        runAsUser: 1 # Any non-root user will do. Match to the workload.
        allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
        readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
      volumeMounts:
        - name: git-repo
          mountPath: /repo
  containers:
    ...
  volumes:
    - name: git-repo
      emptyDir: {}

What patch addresses this vulnerability?

A patch will be included in an upcoming Kubernetes Engine release. Please check back here for details.

Medium

May 21, 2018

Description Severity Notes

Several vulnerabilities were recently discovered in the Linux kernel which may allow escalation of privileges or denial of service (via kernel crash) from an unprivileged process. These CVEs are identified with tags CVE-2018-1000199, CVE-2018-8897, and CVE-2018-1087. All Kubernetes Engine nodes are affected by these vulnerabilities, and we recommend that you upgrade to the latest patch version, as detailed below.

What should I do?

In order to upgrade, you must first upgrade your master to the newest version. This patch is available in Kubernetes Engine 1.8.12-gke.1, Kubernetes Engine 1.9.7-gke.1, and Kubernetes Engine 1.10.2-gke.1. These releases include patches for both Container-Optimized OS and Ubuntu images.

If you create a new cluster before then, you must specify the patched version for it to be used. Customers who have node auto-upgrades enabled and who do not manually upgrade will have their nodes upgraded to patched versions in the coming weeks.

What vulnerabilities are addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerabilities:

CVE-2018-1000199: This vulnerability affects the Linux kernel. It allows an unprivileged user or process to crash the system kernel, leading to a DoS attack or privilege escalation. This is rated as a High vulnerability, with a CVSS of 7.8.

CVE-2018-8897: This vulnerability affects the Linux kernel. It allows an unprivileged user or process to crash the system kernel, leading to a DoS attack. This is rated as a Medium vulnerability, with a CVSS of 6.5.

CVE-2018-1087: This vulnerability affects Linux kernel's KVM hypervisor. This allows an unprivileged process to crash the guest kernel or potentially gain privileges. This vulnerability is patched in the infrastructure that Kubernetes Engine runs on, so Kubernetes Engine is unaffected. This is rated as a High vulnerability, with a CVSS score of 8.0.

High

March 12, 2018

Description Severity Notes

The Kubernetes project recently disclosed new security vulnerabilities, CVE-2017-1002101 and CVE-2017-1002102, allowing containers to access files outside the container. All Kubernetes Engine nodes are affected by these vulnerabilities, and we recommend that you upgrade to the latest patch version as soon as possible, as we detail below.

What should I do?

Due to the severity of these vulnerabilities, whether you have node auto-upgrades enabled or not, we recommend that you manually upgrade your nodes as soon as the patch becomes available. The patch will be available for all customers by March 16th, but it may be available for you sooner based on the zone your cluster is in, according to the release schedule.

In order to upgrade, you must first upgrade your master to the newest version. This patch will be available in Kubernetes 1.9.4-gke.1, Kubernetes 1.8.9-gke.1, and Kubernetes 1.7.14-gke.1. New clusters will use the patched version by default by March 30; if you create a new cluster before then, you must specify the patched version for it to be used.

Kubernetes Engine customers who have node auto-upgrades enabled and who do not manually upgrade will have their nodes upgraded to patched versions by April 23rd. However, due to the nature of the vulnerability, we recommend you manually upgrade your nodes as soon as the patch is available to you.

What vulnerabilities are addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following two vulnerabilities:

The vulnerability CVE-2017-1002101 allows containers using subpath volume mounts to access files outside of the volume. This means that if you are blocking container access to hostpath volumes with PodSecurityPolicy, an attacker with the ability to update or create pods can mount any hostpath using any other volume type.

The vulnerability CVE-2017-1002102 allows containers using certain volume types - including secrets, config maps, projected volumes, or downward API volumes - to delete files outside of the volume. This means that if a container using one of these volume types is compromised, or if you allow untrusted users to create pods, an attacker could use that container to delete arbitrary files on the host.

To learn more about the fix, read the Kubernetes blog post.

High

GKE on VMware security bulletins

October 16, 2019

Description Severity Notes

A vulnerability was recently discovered in Kubernetes, described in CVE-2019-11253, which allows any user authorized to make POST requests to execute a remote Denial-of-Service attack on a Kubernetes API server. The Kubernetes Product Security Committee (PSC) released additional information on this vulnerability which can be found here.

You can mitigate this vulnerability by limiting which clients have network access to your Kubernetes API servers.

What should I do?

We recommend that you upgrade your clusters to a patch version containing the fix as soon as they are available.

The patch versions which will contain the fix are listed below:

  • GKE Enterprise 1.1.1, which runs Kubernetes version 1.13.7-gke.30
What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability: CVE-2019-11253.

High

CVE-2019-11253

August 23, 2019

Description Severity Notes

We recently discovered and mitigated a vulnerability where the RBAC proxy used for securing monitoring endpoints did not correctly authorize users. As a result, metrics from certain components are available to unauthorized users from within the internal cluster network. The following components were affected:

  • etcd
  • etcd-events
  • kube-apiserver
  • kube-controller-manager
  • kube-scheduler
  • node-exporter
  • kube-state-metrics
  • prometheus
  • alertmanager
What should I do?

We recommend that you upgrade your clusters to version 1.0.2-gke.3, which includes the patch for this vulnerability, as soon as possible.

Medium

GKE on VMware releases

August 22, 2019

Description Severity Notes

Kubernetes recently discovered a vulnerability, CVE-2019-11247, which allows cluster-scoped custom resource instances to be acted on as if they were namespaced objects existing in all Namespaces. This means user and service accounts with only namespace-level RBAC permissions can interact with cluster-scoped custom resources. Exploiting this vulnerability requires the attacker to have privileges to access the resource in any namespace.

What should I do?

We recommend that you upgrade your clusters to version 1.0.2-gke.3, which includes the patch for this vulnerability, as soon as possible.

What vulnerability is addressed by this patch?

The patch mitigates the following vulnerability: CVE-2019-11247.

Medium

CVE-2019-11247