Minimize the admission of containers wishing to share the host process ID namespace

HighLevel 1Automatedoke

Description

Minimize the admission of pods that request host process ID namespace sharing by restricting use of spec.hostPID: true in OKE workload namespaces. In the OKE Pod Security Standards model, this is enforced through Pod Security Admission or an equivalent policy engine. Because the baseline profile prohibits hostPID and restricted inherits that restriction, general user workloads should not be permitted to use host PID sharing. Requires kubectl with cluster-wide read access (KUBECONFIG); system namespaces are excluded and listed resources must be remediated or documented as exceptions.

How it is checked

Audit method: Shell command

shell

out=$(kubectl get pods -A -o go-template='{{range .items}}{{.metadata.namespace}} {{.metadata.name}} {{.spec.hostPID}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}') || exit 1
bad=$(printf '%s\n' "$out" | awk -v ex='^(kube-system|kube-public|kube-node-lease)$' 'NF && $1 !~ ex && ($3=="true")')
if [ -z "$bad" ]; then echo compliant; else printf '%s\n' "$bad" | head -n 25; fi

Expected output: compliant

How it is fixed

Fix method: Guidance or infrastructure patch

Configure Pod Security Admission on workload namespaces so pods that request spec.hostPID: true are denied at admission time. For this control, the baseline and restricted Pod Security Standards disallow hostPID, while restricted is typically the stronger choice for user workloads. For remediation, use enforce because only enforce rejects violating pods. warn and audit can help during rollout, but they do not block admission. Label each workload namespace to enforce restricted. kubectl label ns NAMESPACE pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=restricted --overwrite Add warn and audit during transition if you want visibility into violations before or alongside enforcement.

Properties

Operating systems: Any
Tags: okepoliciespod-security
Reference: CIS Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) Benchmark v2.0.0 - 4.2.2 Minimize the admission of containers wishing to share the host process ID namespace

Check this host

Run this on a machine you are allowed to audit. The scan is read-only.

shell

tmaegis scan --target oke