Configure role-based access control

This page provides an overview for the role-based access control (RBAC) system provided by Kubernetes, and how you can use Kubernetes RBAC in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

Overview

Kubernetes includes a built-in role-based access control (RBAC) mechanism that enables you to configure fine-grained and specific sets of permissions that define how a given Google Cloud user, or group of users, can interact with any Kubernetes object in your cluster, or in a specific Namespace of your cluster.

Kubernetes RBAC is enabled by default.

Before you begin

Before you start, make sure you have performed the following tasks:

• Ensure that you have enabled the Google Kubernetes Engine API.
Enable Google Kubernetes Engine API
• Ensure that you have installed the Google Cloud CLI.
• Set up default Google Cloud CLI settings for your project by using one of the following methods:
• Use gcloud init, if you want to be walked through setting project defaults.
• Use gcloud config, to individually set your project ID, zone, and region.

gcloud init

1. Run gcloud init and follow the directions:

   gcloud init

   If you are using SSH on a remote server, use the --console-only flag to prevent the command from launching a browser:

   gcloud init --console-only

2. Follow the instructions to authorize the gcloud CLI to use your Google Cloud account.
3. Create a new configuration or select an existing one.
4. Choose a Google Cloud project.
5. Choose a default Compute Engine zone.
6. Choose a default Compute Engine region.

Note: You can override these default settings in the gcloud CLI by using the --project, --zone, and --region flags.

gcloud config

1. Set your default project ID:

   gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

2. Set your default Compute Engine region (for example, us-central1):

   gcloud config set compute/region COMPUTE_REGION

3. Set your default Compute Engine zone (for example, us-central1-c):

   gcloud config set compute/zone COMPUTE_ZONE

4. Update gcloud to the latest version:

   gcloud components update

Note: You can override these default settings in the gcloud CLI by using the --project, --zone, and --region flags.

By setting default locations, you can avoid errors in gcloud CLI like the following: One of [--zone, --region] must be supplied: Please specify location.

Interaction with Identity and Access Management

You can use both Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Kubernetes RBAC to control access to your GKE cluster:

• IAM is not specific to Kubernetes; it provides identity management for multiple Google Cloud products, and operates primarily at the level of the Google Cloud project.

• Kubernetes RBAC is a core component of Kubernetes and lets you create and grant roles (sets of permissions) for any object or type of object within the cluster.

In GKE, IAM and Kubernetes RBAC are integrated to authorize users to perform actions if they have sufficient permissions according to either tool. This is an important part of bootstrapping a GKE cluster, since by default Google Cloud users do not have any Kubernetes RBAC RoleBindings.

To authorize users using Google Cloud accounts, the client must be correctly configured to authenticate using those accounts first. For example, if you are using kubectl, you must configure the kubectl command to authenticate to Google Cloud before running any commands that require authorization.

Note: Many failures that appear to be due to authorization are actually caused because the cluster is unable to authenticate the client. For example, there are special requirements for authenticating from Compute Engine instances, which are described in Cluster access for kubectl.

In almost all cases, Kubernetes RBAC can be used instead of IAM. GKE users require at minimum, the container.clusters.get IAM permission in the project that contains the cluster. This permission is included in the container.clusterViewer role, and in other more highly privileged roles. The container.clusters.get permission is required for users to authenticate to the clusters in the project, but does not authorize them to perform any actions inside those clusters. Authorization may then be provided by either IAM or Kubernetes RBAC.

Define and assign permissions

You can define RBAC rules in ClusterRole and Role objects, and then assign those rules with ClusterRoleBinding and RoleBinding objects as follows:

• ClusterRole: a cluster-level grouping of resources and allowed operations that you can assign to a user or a group using a RoleBinding or a ClusterRoleBinding.
• Role: a namespaced grouping of resources and allowed operations that you can assign to a user or a group of users using a RoleBinding.
• ClusterRoleBinding: assign a ClusterRole to a user or a group for all namespaces in the cluster.
• RoleBinding: assign a Role or a ClusterRole to a user or a group within a specific namespace.

When you use a RoleBinding to assign a ClusterRole to a user or group, those users and groups can only access resources in the namespace you specify in the RoleBinding. If you want the users or groups to access resource across all namespaces, use a ClusterRoleBinding instead.

Note: RBAC roles are additive. There are no deny rules. When structuring your RBAC roles, think of each role as granting access to resources.

Define permissions using Roles or ClusterRoles

You define permissions within a Role or ClusterRole object. A Role defines access to resources within a single Namespace, while a ClusterRole defines access to resources in the entire cluster.

Roles and ClusterRoles have the same syntax. Each has a rules section, where you define the resources the rule applies to and allowed operations for the Role. For example, the following Role grants read access (get, watch, and list) to all pods in the accounting Namespace:

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  namespace: accounting
  name: pod-reader
rules:
- apiGroups: [""] # "" indicates the core API group
  resources: ["pods"]
  verbs: ["get", "watch", "list"]

Refer to the Role and ClusterRole API documentation for a full list of allowed fields.

Note: You cannot create a Role that defines permissions unless you already have the permissions defined in the Role. If you have been granted the cluster-admin IAM role, this is sufficient.

Role vs. ClusterRole

Because permissions granted by a ClusterRole apply across the entire cluster, you can use ClusterRoles to control access to different kinds of resources than you can with Roles. These include:

• Cluster-scoped resources such as nodes
• Non-resource REST Endpoints such as /healthz
• Namespaced resources across all Namespaces (for example, all Pods across the entire cluster, regardless of Namespace)

Assign Roles using RoleBindings or ClusterRoleBindings

After creating a Role or ClusterRole, you assign it to a user or group of users by creating a RoleBinding or ClusterRoleBinding. Users and groups are called subjects, and can be any of the following:

Subject type	Value for kind	Value for name
Google Cloud user account	User	Google Cloud registered email address
Kubernetes service account	ServiceAccount	The name of a Kubernetes ServiceAccount object in the cluster
IAM service account	User	Automatically generated IAM service account email address
Google Group address on a verified domain	Group	Email address of a Google Workspace Group that is a member of the gke-security-groups group. For instructions to set up Google Groups for RBAC, refer to Configure Google Groups for RBAC.

The following RoleBinding grants the pod-reader Role to a user, a Kubernetes service account, an IAM service account, and a Google Group:

kind: RoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: pod-reader-binding
  namespace: accounting
subjects:
# Google Cloud user account
- kind: User
  name: [e-mail]
# Kubernetes service account
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: johndoe
# IAM service account
- kind: User
  name: [e-mail]
# Google Group
- kind: Group
  name: [e-mail]
roleRef:
  kind: Role
  name: pod-reader
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

API Usage and Examples

For complete information on using the Kubernetes API to create the necessary Role, ClusterRole, RoleBinding, and ClusterRoleBinding objects for RBAC, see Using Role-Based Access Control Authorization in the Kubernetes documentation.

Troubleshooting and debugging

To debug issues with RBAC, use the Admin activity audit log, which is enabled on all clusters by default. If access to a resource or operation is denied due to lack of sufficient permissions, the API server logs an RBAC DENY error, along with additional information such as the user's implicit and explicit group membership. If you are using Google Groups for RBAC, google groups appears in the log message.

Limitations

The following sections describe interactions that might not seem obvious when working with Kubernetes RBAC.

Default discovery roles

Clusters are created with a set of default ClusterRoles and ClusterRoleBindings. Requests made with valid credentials are placed in the system:authenticated group, whereas all other requests fall into system:unauthenticated.

The system:basic-user ClusterRole lets users make SelfSubjectAccessReviews to test their permissions in the cluster. The system:discovery role lets users read discovery APIs, which can reveal information about CustomResourceDefinitions added to the cluster.

Anonymous users (system:unauthenticated) receive the system:public-info-viewer ClusterRole instead, which grants read-only access to /healthz and /version APIs.

To see the API endpoints allowed by the system:discovery ClusterRole, run the following command:

kubectl get clusterroles system:discovery -o yaml

Forbidden error for service accounts on Google Cloud VM instances

The following error can occur when the VM instance does not have the userinfo-email scope:

Error from server (Forbidden): error when creating ... "role-name" is forbidden: attempt to grant extra privileges:...

For example, suppose the VM has cloud-platform scope but does not have userinfo-email scope. When the VM gets an access token, Google Cloud associates that token with the cloud-platform scope. When the Kubernetes API server asks Google Cloud for the identity associated with the access token, it receives the service account's unique ID, not the service account's email.

To authenticate successfully, either create a new VM with the userinfo-email scope or create a new role binding that uses the unique ID.

To create a new VM instance with the userinfo-email scope, run the following command:

gcloud compute instances create INSTANCE_NAME \
    --service-account SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL \
    --scopes userinfo-email

To create a new role binding that uses the service account's unique ID for an existing VM, perform the following steps:

1. Identify the service account's unique ID:

   gcloud iam service-accounts describe SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL
   

   For example, the following output displays the uniqueId for the [e-mail] service account:

   displayName: Some Domain IAM service account
   email: [e-mail]
   etag: BwWWja0YfJA
   name: projects/project-name/serviceAccounts/[e-mail]
   oauth2ClientId: '123456789012345678901'
   projectId: project-name
   uniqueId: '123456789012345678901'
   

2. Create a role binding using the uniqueId of the service account:

   kubectl create clusterrolebinding CLUSTERROLEBINDING_NAME \
       --clusterrole cluster-admin \
       --user UNIQUE_ID
   

What's next

• Learn how to create IAM policies.
• Learn how to configure Google Groups for RBAC.