RBAC (Role Based Access Control) on K3s

Question

after watching a view videos on RBAC (role based access control) on kubernetes (of which this one was the most transparent for me), I've followed the steps, however on k3s, not k8s as all the sources imply. From what I could gather (not working), the problem isn't with the actual role binding process, but rather the x509 user cert which isn't acknowledged from the API service

$ kubectl get pods --kubeconfig userkubeconfig

error: You must be logged in to the server (Unauthorized)

Also not documented on Rancher's wiki on security for K3s (while documented for their k8s implementation)?, while described for rancher 2.x itself, not sure if it's a problem with my implementation, or a k3s <-> k8s thing.

$ kubectl version --short
Client Version: v1.20.5+k3s1
Server Version: v1.20.5+k3s1

---

With duplication of the process, my steps are as follows:

1. Get k3s ca certs

This was described to be under /etc/kubernetes/pki (k8s), however based on this seems to be at /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/tls/ (server-ca.crt & server-ca.key).

2. Gen user certs from ca certs

#generate user key
$ openssl genrsa -out user.key 2048

#generate signing request from ca
openssl req -new -key user.key -out user.csr -subj "/CN=user/O=rbac"

# generate user.crt from this
openssl x509 -req -in user.csr -CA server-ca.crt -CAkey server-ca.key -CAcreateserial -out user.crt -days 365

... all good:

3. Creating kubeConfig file for user, based on the certs:

# Take user.crt and base64 encode to get encoded crt
cat user.crt | base64 -w0

# Take user.key and base64 encode to get encoded key
cat user.key | base64 -w0

• Created config file:

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: <server-ca.crt base64-encoded>
    server: https://<k3s masterIP>:6443
  name: home-pi4
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: home-pi4
    user: user
    namespace: rbac
  name: user-homepi4
current-context: user-homepi4
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: user
  user:
    client-certificate-data: <user.crt base64-encoded>
    client-key-data: <user.key base64-encoded>

4. Setup role & roleBinding (within specified namespace 'rbac')

• role

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  name: user-rbac
  namespace: rbac
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - "*"
  resources:
  - pods
  verbs:
  - get
  - list

• roleBinding

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
  name: user-rb
  namespace: rbac
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Role
  name: user-rbac
subjects:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: User
  name: user 

---

After all of this, I get fun times of...

$ kubectl get pods --kubeconfig userkubeconfig
error: You must be logged in to the server (Unauthorized)

Any suggestions please?

Apparently this stackOverflow question presented a solution to the problem, but following the github feed, it came more-or-less down to the same approach followed here (unless I'm missing something)?

Answer 1

As we can find in the Kubernetes Certificate Signing Requests documentation:

A few steps are required in order to get a normal user to be able to authenticate and invoke an API.

I will create an example to illustrate how you can get a normal user who is able to authenticate and invoke an API (I will use the user john as an example).

---

First, create PKI private key and CSR:

# openssl genrsa -out john.key 2048

NOTE: CN is the name of the user and O is the group that this user will belong to

# openssl req -new -key john.key -out john.csr -subj "/CN=john/O=group1"

# ls
john.csr  john.key

Then create a CertificateSigningRequest and submit it to a Kubernetes Cluster via kubectl.

# cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
> apiVersion: certificates.k8s.io/v1
> kind: CertificateSigningRequest
> metadata:
>   name: john
> spec:
>   groups:
>   - system:authenticated
>   request: $(cat john.csr | base64 | tr -d '\n')
>   signerName: kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client
>   usages:
>   - client auth
> EOF
certificatesigningrequest.certificates.k8s.io/john created


# kubectl get csr
NAME   AGE   SIGNERNAME                            REQUESTOR      CONDITION
john   39s   kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client   system:admin   Pending

# kubectl certificate approve john
certificatesigningrequest.certificates.k8s.io/john approved

# kubectl get csr
NAME   AGE   SIGNERNAME                            REQUESTOR      CONDITION
john   52s   kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client   system:admin   Approved,Issued

Export the issued certificate from the CertificateSigningRequest:

# kubectl get csr john -o jsonpath='{.status.certificate}'  | base64 -d > john.crt

# ls
john.crt  john.csr  john.key

With the certificate created, we can define the Role and RoleBinding for this user to access Kubernetes cluster resources. I will use the Role and RoleBinding similar to yours.

# cat role.yml 
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  name: john-role
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - pods
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  
# kubectl apply -f role.yml 
role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/john-role created

# cat rolebinding.yml 
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
  name: john-binding
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Role
  name: john-role
subjects:
- apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: User
  name: john
  
# kubectl apply -f rolebinding.yml 
rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/john-binding created

The last step is to add this user into the kubeconfig file (see: Add to kubeconfig)

# kubectl config set-credentials john --client-key=john.key --client-certificate=john.crt --embed-certs=true
User "john" set.

# kubectl config set-context john --cluster=default --user=john
Context "john" created.

Finally, we can change the context to john and check if it works as expected.

# kubectl config use-context john
Switched to context "john".

# kubectl config current-context
john

# kubectl get pods
NAME   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
web    1/1     Running   0          30m

# kubectl run web-2 --image=nginx
Error from server (Forbidden): pods is forbidden: User "john" cannot create resource "pods" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

As you can see, it works as expected (user john only has get and list permissions).