Seccomp Profiles

Using custom Seccomp Profiles with Kubernetes workloads.

Seccomp stands for secure computing mode and has been a feature of the Linux kernel since version 2.6.12. It can be used to sandbox the privileges of a process, restricting the calls it is able to make from userspace into the kernel.

Refer the Kubernetes Seccomp Guide for more details.

In this guide we are going to configure a custom Seccomp Profile that logs all syscalls made by the workload.

Preparing the nodes

Create a machine config path with the contents below and save as patch.yaml

machine:
  seccompProfiles:
    - name: audit.json
      value:
        defaultAction: SCMP_ACT_LOG

Apply the machine config to all the nodes using talosctl:

talosctl -e <endpoint ip/hostname> -n <node ip/hostname> patch mc -p @patch.yaml

This would create a seccomp profile name audit.json on the node at /var/lib/kubelet/seccomp/profiles.

The profiles can be used by Kubernetes pods by specfying the pod securityContext as below:

spec:
  securityContext:
    seccompProfile:
      type: Localhost
      localhostProfile: profiles/audit.json

Note that the localhostProfile uses the name of the profile created under profiles directory. So make sure to use path as profiles/<profile-name.json>

This can be verfied by running the below commands:

talosctl -e <endpoint ip/hostname> -n <node ip/hostname> get seccompprofiles

An output similar to below can be observed:

NODE       NAMESPACE   TYPE             ID           VERSION
10.5.0.3   cri         SeccompProfile   audit.json   1

The content of the seccomp profile can be viewed by running the below command:

talosctl -e <endpoint ip/hostname> -n <node ip/hostname> read /var/lib/kubelet/seccomp/profiles/audit.json

An output similar to below can be observed:

{"defaultAction":"SCMP_ACT_LOG"}

Create a Kubernetes workload that uses the custom Seccomp Profile

Here we’ll be using an example workload from the Kubernetes documentation.

First open up a second terminal and run the following talosctl command so that we can view the Syscalls being logged in realtime:

talosctl -e <endpoint ip/hostname> -n <node ip/hostname> dmesg --follow --tail

Now deploy the example workload from the Kubernetes documentation:

kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/security/seccomp/ga/audit-pod.yaml

Once the pod starts running the terminal running talosctl dmesg command from above should log similar to below:

10.5.0.3: kern:    info: [2022-07-28T11:49:42.489473063Z]: cni0: port 1(veth32488a86) entered blocking state
10.5.0.3: kern:    info: [2022-07-28T11:49:42.490852063Z]: cni0: port 1(veth32488a86) entered disabled state
10.5.0.3: kern:    info: [2022-07-28T11:49:42.492470063Z]: device veth32488a86 entered promiscuous mode
10.5.0.3: kern:    info: [2022-07-28T11:49:42.503105063Z]: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
10.5.0.3: kern:    info: [2022-07-28T11:49:42.503944063Z]: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): veth32488a86: link becomes ready
10.5.0.3: kern:    info: [2022-07-28T11:49:42.504764063Z]: cni0: port 1(veth32488a86) entered blocking state
10.5.0.3: kern:    info: [2022-07-28T11:49:42.505423063Z]: cni0: port 1(veth32488a86) entered forwarding state
10.5.0.3: kern: warning: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.873616063Z]: kauditd_printk_skb: 14 callbacks suppressed
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.873619063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.445:25): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=3 compat=0 ip=0x55ec0657bd3b code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.876609063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.445:26): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=3 compat=0 ip=0x55ec0657bd3b code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.878789063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.449:27): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=257 compat=0 ip=0x55ec0657bdaa code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.886693063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.461:28): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=202 compat=0 ip=0x55ec06532b43 code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.888764063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.461:29): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=202 compat=0 ip=0x55ec06532b43 code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.891009063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.461:30): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=1 compat=0 ip=0x55ec0657bd3b code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.893162063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.461:31): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=3 compat=0 ip=0x55ec0657bd3b code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.895365063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.461:32): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=39 compat=0 ip=0x55ec066eb68b code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.898306063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.461:33): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="runc:[2:INIT]" exe="/" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=59 compat=0 ip=0x55ec0657be16 code=0x7ffc0000
10.5.0.3: kern:  notice: [2022-07-28T11:49:44.901518063Z]: audit: type=1326 audit(1659008985.473:34): auid=4294967295 uid=0 gid=0 ses=4294967295 pid=2784 comm="http-echo" exe="/http-echo" sig=0 arch=c000003e syscall=158 compat=0 ip=0x455f35 code=0x7ffc0000

Cleanup

You can clean up the test resources by running the following command:

kubectl delete pod audit-pod

Last modified August 17, 2023: docs: fork docs for Talos 1.6 (676db9768)