kdigger
kdigger, short for "Kubernetes digger", is a context discovery tool for Kubernetes penetration testing. This tool is a compilation of various plugins called buckets to facilitate pentesting Kubernetes from inside a pod.
Please note that this is not an ultimate pentest tool on Kubernetes. Some plugins perform really simple actions, that could be performed manually by calling the mount command or listing all devices present in dev with ls /dev for example. But some others automate scanning processes, such as the admission controller scanner. In the end, this tool aims to humbly speed up the pentesting process.
Table of content
Installation
Via releases
For installation instructions from binaries please visit the Releases Page.
Build from source
$ git clone https://github.com/quarkslab/kdigger
$ make
Then you can move the binary somewhere included in your PATH, for example:
$ sudo install kdigger /usr/local/bin
Via Go
$ go get github.com/quarkslab/kdigger
Usage
What you generally want to do is running all the buckets with dig all or just d a:
$ kdigger dig all
Help is provided by the CLI itself, just type kdigger to see the options:
$ kdigger
kdigger is an extensible CLI tool to dig around when you are in a Kubernetes
cluster. For that you can use multiples buckets. Buckets are plugins that can
scan specific aspects of a cluster or bring expertise to automate the Kubernetes
pentest process.
Usage:
kdigger [command]
Available Commands:
dig Use all buckets or specific ones
help Help about any command
ls List available buckets or describe specific ones
version Print the version information
Flags:
-h, --help help for kdigger
-o, --output string Output format. One of: human|json. (default "human")
-w, --width int Width for the human output (default 140)
Use "kdigger [command] --help" for more information about a command.
Make sure to check out the help on the dig command to see all the available flags:
$ kdigger dig
This command runs buckets, special keyword "all" or "a" runs all registered
buckets. You can find information about all buckets with the list command. To
run one or more specific buckets, just input their names or aliases as
arguments.
Usage:
kdigger dig [buckets] [flags]
Aliases:
dig, d
Flags:
-a, --active Enable all buckets that might have side effect on environment.
--admission-force Force creation of pods to scan admission even without cleaning rights. (this flag is specific to the admission bucket)
-c, --color Enable color in output. (default true if output is human)
-h, --help help for dig
--kubeconfig string (optional) absolute path to the kubeconfig file (default "/home/mahe/.kube/config")
-n, --namespace string Kubernetes namespace to use. (default to the namespace in the context)
Global Flags:
-o, --output string Output format. One of: human|json. (default "human")
-w, --width int Width for the human output (default 140)
Details
Usage warning
Be careful when running this tool, some checks have side effects, like scanning your available syscalls or trying to create pods to scan the admission control. By default these checks will not run without the --active or -a flag.
For example, syscalls scans may succeed to perform some syscalls with empty arguments, and it can alter your environment or configuration. For instance, if the hostname syscall is successful, it will replace the hostname with the empty string. So please, NEVER run with sufficient permissions (as root for example) directly on your machine.
Results warning
Some tests are based on details of implementation or side effects on the environment that might be subject to changes in the future. So be cautious with the results.
On top of that, some results might need some experience to be understood and analyzed. To take a specific example, if you are granted the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability inside a Kubernetes container, there is a good chance that it is because you are running in a privileged container. But you should definitely confirm that by looking at the number of devices available or the other capabilities that you are granted. Indeed, it might be necessary to get CAP_SYS_ADMIN to be privileged but it’s not sufficient and if it is your goal, you can easily trick the results by crafting very specific pods that might look confusing regarding this tool results.
It might not be the most sophisticated tool to pentest a Kubernetes cluster, but you can see this as a Kubernetes pentest 101 compilation!
Why another tool?
I started researching Kubernetes security a few months ago and participated in the 2021 Europe KubeCon Cloud-Native Security Day CTF. I learned a lot by watching various security experts conferences and demonstrations and this CTF was a really beginner-friendly entry point to practice what I learned in theory. During a live solving session, I had the opportunity to see how Kubernetes security experts were trying to solve the challenge, how they were thinking, what they were looking for.
So I decided to create a tool that compiles most of the checks we usually do as pentesters when in a Kubernetes pod to acquire information very quickly. There already are various tools out there. For example, a lot of experts were using amicontained, a famous container introspection tool by Jessie Frazelle. This tool is truly awesome, but some features are outdated, like the PID namespace detection, and it is not specialized in Kubernetes, it is only a container tool that can already give a lot of hints about your Kubernetes situation.
That is why, in kdigger, I included most of amicontained features. You can:
- Try to guess your container runtime.
- See your capabilities.
- Scan for namespace activation and configuration.
- Scan for the allowed syscalls.
But you can also do more Kubernetes specific operations:
- Retrieve service account token.
- Scan token permissions.
- List interesting environment variables.
- List available devices.
- Retrieve all available services in a cluster.
- Scan the admission controller chain!
Anyway, this tool is obviously not an automatically hack your Kubernetes cluster application, it is mostly just a compilation of tedious tasks that can be performed automatically very quickly. You still need a lot of expertise to interpret the digest and understand what the various outputs mean. And also, during pentest and challenges, you do not always have Internet access to pull your favorite toolchain, so you can also see this compilation as a checklist that you can somehow perform manually with a basic installation and a shell.
How this tool is built?
In addition to all the available features, this tool was built with a plugin design so that it can be easily extended by anyone that wants to bring some expertises.
For example, you are a security researcher on Kubernetes, and when you are doing CTFs or pentesting real infrastructure, you are often performing specific repetitive actions that could be automated or at least compiled with others. You can take a look at /pkg/plugins/template/template.go to bootstrap your own plugins and propose them to the project to extend the features! You only need a name, optionally some aliases, a description and filling the Run() function with the actual logic.
Areas for improvement
The expertize proposed by the tool could be refined and more precise. For now it's mostly dumping raw data for most of the buckets and rely on the user to understand what it implies.
Generally the output format is not the best and could be reworked. The human format via array lines does not fit all the use cases. The tool also proposes a JSON output format, it has the advantage to exist but is really quirky and uses arrays so extracting information might be a bit unpredictable.
How can I experience with this tool?
Good news! We created a mini Kubernetes CTF with basic steps to experience with the tool and resolve quick challenges. For more information go to the minik8s-ctf repository.
Buckets
You can list and describe the available buckets (or plugins) with kdigger list or kdigger ls:
$ kdigger ls
+---------------+----------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+
| NAME | ALIASES | DESCRIPTION | ACTIVE |
+---------------+----------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+
| admission | [admissions adm] | Admission scans the admission | true |
| | | controller chain by creating | |
| | | specific pods to find what is | |
| | | prevented or not. | |
| authorization | [authorizations auth] | Authorization checks your API | false |
| | | permissions with the current | |
| | | context or the available token. | |
| capabilities | [capability cap] | Capabilities list all | false |
| | | capabilities in all sets and | |
| | | displays dangerous capabilities | |
| | | in red. | |
| devices | [device dev] | Devices shows the list of | false |
| | | devices available in the | |
| | | container. | |
| environment | [environments environ env] | Environment checks the presence | false |
| | | of kubernetes related | |
| | | environment variables and shows | |
| | | them. | |
| mount | [mounts mn] | Mount shows all mounted devices | false |
| | | in the container. | |
| pidnamespace | [pidnamespaces pidns] | PIDnamespace analyses the PID | false |
| | | namespace of the container in | |
| | | the context of Kubernetes. | |
| processes | [process ps] | Processes analyses the running | false |
| | | processes in your PID namespace | |
| runtime | [runtimes rt] | Runtime finds clues to identify | false |
| | | which container runtime is | |
| | | running the container. | |
| services | [service svc] | Services uses CoreDNS wildcards | false |
| | | feature to discover every | |
| | | service available in the | |
| | | cluster. | |
| syscalls | [syscall sys] | Syscalls scans most of the | true |
| | | syscalls to detect which are | |
| | | blocked and allowed. | |
| token | [tokens tk] | Token checks for the presence | false |
| | | of a service account token in | |
| | | the filesystem. | |
| userid | [userids id] | UserID retrieves UID, GID and | false |
| | | their corresponding names. | |
| usernamespace | [usernamespaces userns] | UserNamespace analyses the user | false |
| | | namespace configuration. | |
| version | [versions v] | Version dumps the API server | false |
| | | version informations. | |
+---------------+----------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+
Admission
Admission scans the admission controller chain by creating specific pods to find what is prevented or not. The idea behind this bucket is to check, after you learned that you have create pods ability, if no admission controller like a PodSecurityPolicy or another is blocking you to create node privilege escalation pods. Like mounting the host filesystem, or the host PID namespace, or just a privileged container for example.
This bucket currently automatically tries to create:
- a privileged pod
- a privilege escalation pod
- a host network pod
- a host path pod
- a run as root pod
- a host PID pod
So, if you are granted rights to create pods, you can check the presence of any admission controller that might restrict you.
Authorization
Authorization checks your API permissions with the current context or the available token. If you use kdigger inside a pod as planned, it will check and use the service account token that is normally mounted inside the pod. Then it will basically operate exactly the same operation as if you do kubectl auth can-i --list and display the result.
Capabilities
Capabilities list all capabilities in all sets and displays dangerous capabilities in red.
Basically, in a non-privileged container, the result might look like that:
### CAPABILITIES ###
Comment: The bounding set contains 14 caps, it seems that you are running a non-privileged container.
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| SET | CAPABILITIES |
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| effective | [chown dac_override fowner fsetid kill setgid |
| | setuid setpcap net_bind_service net_raw sys_chroot |
| | mknod audit_write setfcap] |
| permitted | [chown dac_override fowner fsetid kill setgid |
| | setuid setpcap net_bind_service net_raw sys_chroot |
| | mknod audit_write setfcap] |
| inheritable | [chown dac_override fowner fsetid kill setgid |
| | setuid setpcap net_bind_service net_raw sys_chroot |
| | mknod audit_write setfcap] |
| bounding | [chown dac_override fowner fsetid kill setgid |
| | setuid setpcap net_bind_service net_raw sys_chroot |
| | mknod audit_write setfcap] |
| ambient | [] |
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------+
This bucket might be especially useful to spot critical capabilities that can help you to escalate your privileges. This can be a good hint on whether you are running inside a privileged container or not.
Devices
Devices show the list of devices available in the container. This one is straightforward, it's equivalent to just ls /dev. Nevertheless, the number of available devices can also be a good hint on running in a privileged container or not.
Environment
Environment checks the presence of Kubernetes related environment variables and shows them. Like always, it's not sufficient, but detecting Kubernetes related environment variables can give you a pretty good idea that you are running in a Kubernetes cluster. That might be useful if you want to quickly find out where you are. Of course, this one is easy to confuse, by just exporting some environment variable or removing some.
Mount
Mount show all mounted devices in the container. This is equivalent to use the mount command directly but the number of mounted devices and reading path can show you mounted volumes, configmap or even secrets inside the pod.
PIDNamespace
PIDNamespace analyses the PID namespace of the container in the context of Kubernetes. Detecting the PID namespace is almost impossible so the idea of this bucket is to scan the /proc folder to search for specific processes like:
pause: it might signify that you are sharing the PID namespace between all the containers composing the pod.kubelet: it might signify that you are sharing the PID namespace with the host.
By the way, the detection in amicontained is based on the device number of the namespace file, a detail of implementation which is no longer reliable and most of the time wrong. This is why I tried a different approach.
Processes
Processes analyses the running processes in your PID namespace. It is similar to any ps command that list all processes like ps -e or ps -A. It gives you the information of the number of running processes and if the first one is systemd.
Runtime
Runtime finds clues to identify which container runtime is running the container. This one is calling exactly the same code that the one in amicontained. It is using a package of the genuinetools/bpfd project to spot artefacts about container runtime that could betray their presence.
Please note that this is a 3 year old part of that code and that it makes no distinction between Docker and containerd.
Services
Services uses CoreDNS wildcards feature to discover every service available in the cluster. In fact, it appears that CoreDNS, that is now widely used in Kubernetes cluster proposes a wildcards features. You can learn more about it here in the documentation.
This bucket is extremely useful to perform discovery really fast in a Kubernetes cluster. The DNS will kindly give you every service domain present in the cluster.
Syscalls
Syscalls scans most of the syscalls to detect which are blocked and allowed. This one is also using a lot of the amicontained code base except that it also banned the SYS_PTRACE scan that causes a racing condition that can hang the program forever.
This is one really nice way to see if you are in a privileged container with a lot of capabilities quickly: the list of blocked syscall might be almost empty.
Token
Token checks for the presence of a service account token in the filesystem. Then it dumps the stuff it finds in /run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount which is composed of the service account token itself, the namespace and the CA certificate of the kube API server.
You might want to use the -o json flag here and use jq to get that token fast!
UserID
UserID retrieves UID, GID and their corresponding names. It also gives homeDir as a bonus! Unfortunately, we can list all group IDs without CGO enabled. This is almost (because id is better) equivalent to run the id command directly.
UserNamespace
UserNamespace analyses the user namespace configuration. The user namespace is transparent and can be easily detected. It is even possible to read the mapping between the current user namespace and the outer namespace. Unfortunately for now, user namespace cannot be used with Kubernetes.
Version
Version dumps the API server version informations. It access the /version path that is accessible even by unauthenticated users. So even without a service account token you can request this information. You can get more information on what you can access as an system:unauthenticated user with kubectl describe clusterrolebinding | grep unauthenticated -B 9 for example. You may encounter the system:public-info-viewer cluster role, you can describe it with kubectl describe clusterrole system:public-info-viewer and display:
Name: system:public-info-viewer
Labels: kubernetes.io/bootstrapping=rbac-defaults
Annotations: rbac.authorization.kubernetes.io/autoupdate: true
PolicyRule:
Resources Non-Resource URLs Resource Names Verbs
--------- ----------------- -------------- -----
[/healthz] [] [get]
[/livez] [] [get]
[/readyz] [] [get]
[/version/] [] [get]
[/version] [] [get]
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
![[feat] Add flag for namespaces during kdigger gen](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/81210977?v=4)
