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Profile applicability: Level 1 - Master Node
The Kubernetes API stores secrets, which may be service account tokens for the Kubernetes API or credentials used by workloads in the cluster. Access to these secrets should be restricted to the smallest possible group of users to reduce the risk of privilege escalation.
Inappropriate access to secrets stored within the Kubernetes cluster can allow for an attacker to gain additional access to the Kubernetes cluster or external resources whose credentials are stored as secrets.
Note
Note
By default in a kubeadm cluster the following list of principals have get privileges on secret objects.

Impact

Care should be taken not to remove access to secrets to system components which require this for their operation.

Audit

Review the users who have get, list, or watch access to secrets objects in the Kubernetes API.

Remediation

Where possible, remove get, list, and watch access to secret objects in the cluster.