Prevent Privilege Escalation

Risk Level: Medium (should be achieved)

Ensure that containers are prohibited from being admitted if they have "allowPrivilegeEscalation" set to true. The "allowPrivilegeEscalation" flag should be restricted because allowing privilege escalation can enable a process within the container to gain rights beyond those initially granted, potentially leading to a security breach.

Security

A container with **allowPrivilegeEscalation: true** can allow processes to gain more privileges than their parent. To maintain security, you must define an admission control policy to prevent this setting. If you require privilege escalation or setuid binaries, isolate these containers under a separate, highly restricted policy.

Audit

To determine if the containers are permitted to operate with the "allowPrivilegeEscalation" flag set to true, perform the following operations:

Using OCI CLI

Run iam compartment list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) with output query filters to list the ID of each compartment available in your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) account:
```
oci iam compartment list
	--all
	--include-root
	--query 'data[]."id"'
```

The command output should return the requested OCI compartment identifiers (OCIDs):

[
	"ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd",
	"ocid1.compartment.oc1..abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd"
]

Run ce cluster list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) with the ID of the OCI compartment that you want to examine as the identifier parameter, to list the ID of each OCI Kubernetes Engine (OKE) cluster available in the selected OCI compartment:
```
oci ce cluster list
	--compartment-id 'ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd'
	--all
	--query 'data[]."id"'
```

The command output should return the requested OKE cluster IDs:

[
	"ocid1.cluster.oc1.ap-sydney-1.aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd",
	"ocid1.cluster.oc1.ap-sydney-1.abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd"
]

Run ce cluster create-kubeconfig command (Windows/macOS/Linux) with the ID of the OCI Kubernetes Engine (OKE) cluster that you want to access as the identifier parameter, to generate and configure the Kubernetes configuration file (kubeconfig) that the kubectl tool needs to securely communicate with and manage the selected OKE cluster:
```
oci ce cluster create-kubeconfig
	--cluster-id 'ocid1.cluster.oc1.ap-sydney-1.aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd'
	--file $HOME/.kube/config
	--kube-endpoint PUBLIC_ENDPOINT
	--region 'ap-sydney-1'
	--token-version 2.0.0
```
The command output should return the path to the new Kubeconfig file:
```
New config written to the Kubeconfig file /home/user/.kube/config
```
Run the following command to check the versions of the client and server components of your Kubernetes cluster:
```
kubectl version
```
The command output should return the versions of the client and server components:
```
Client Version: v1.33.1
Kustomize Version: v5.6.0
Server Version: v1.34.1
```

Run the following command to list the names of all Pods across all namespaces and filter the command output for containers with "allowPrivilegeEscalation" flag set to true:

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o json | jq -r '.items[] | select(any(.spec.containers[]; .securityContext.allowPrivilegeEscalation == true)) | "\(.metadata.namespace)/\(.metadata.name)"'

The command output should return the requested information:
```
dev/proxymux-client-abc123
dev/canal-abcd1234
dev/monitoring-agent-abc
dev/kube-proxy-123abc
```
If the command output returns one or more results, it indicates that Pods are running within the selected OKE cluster that violate the security restriction against privilege escalation (i.e., containers are permitted to run with allowPrivilegeEscalation: true).

Remediation / Resolution

To ensure that containers are not permitted to run with the "allowPrivilegeEscalation" flag set to true, perform the following operations:

Using OCI CLI

Run iam compartment list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) with output query filters to list the ID of each compartment available in your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) account:
```
oci iam compartment list
	--all
	--include-root
	--query 'data[]."id"'
```

The command output should return the requested OCI compartment identifiers (OCIDs):

[
	"ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd",
	"ocid1.compartment.oc1..abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd"
]

Run ce cluster list command (Windows/macOS/Linux) with the ID of the OCI compartment that you want to examine as the identifier parameter, to list the ID of each OCI Kubernetes Engine (OKE) cluster available in the selected OCI compartment:
```
oci ce cluster list
	--compartment-id 'ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd'
	--all
	--query 'data[]."id"'
```

The command output should return the requested OKE cluster IDs:

[
	"ocid1.cluster.oc1.ap-sydney-1.aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd",
	"ocid1.cluster.oc1.ap-sydney-1.abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd"
]

Run ce cluster create-kubeconfig command (Windows/macOS/Linux) with the ID of the OCI Kubernetes Engine (OKE) cluster that you want to access as the identifier parameter, to generate and configure the Kubernetes configuration file (kubeconfig) that the kubectl tool needs to securely communicate with and manage the selected OKE cluster:
```
oci ce cluster create-kubeconfig
	--cluster-id 'ocid1.cluster.oc1.ap-sydney-1.aaaabbbbccccddddabcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd'
	--file $HOME/.kube/config
	--kube-endpoint PUBLIC_ENDPOINT
	--region 'ap-sydney-1'
	--token-version 2.0.0
```
The command output should return the path to the new Kubeconfig file:
```
New config written to the Kubeconfig file /home/user/.kube/config
```
Run the following command to check the versions of the client and server components of your Kubernetes cluster:
```
kubectl version
```
The command output should return the versions of the client and server components:
```
Client Version: v1.33.1
Kustomize Version: v5.6.0
Server Version: v1.34.1
```
Run the kubectl get namespaces command to identify your Kubernetes user-workload namespaces. A Kubernetes user-workload namespace is a logical partition within an OKE cluster intended for hosting applications and services deployed by users or development teams:
```
kubectl get namespaces
```

The command output should return a list with all namespaces. OCI Kubernetes Engine (OKE) clusters come with several default namespaces. Exclude the default OKE system namespaces (i.e., kube-system, kube-public, kube-node-lease, and default) from your implementation:

NAME                 STATUS   AGE
default              Active   16d
kube-node-lease      Active   16d
kube-public          Active   16d
kube-system          Active   16d
...
dev                  Active   16d
staging              Active   16d
prod                 Active   16d

The Baseline Pod Security Standard (PSS) profile, when enforced at the namespace level, disallows the use of allowPrivilegeEscalation: true. To block the "allowPrivilegeEscalation" setting, run the kubectl label command for each Kubernetes user-workload namespace where enforcement is desired. This command applies the appropriate security policy. By using a label like pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=baseline, you instruct the Kubernetes API server that any new Pod in that namespace must comply with the Baseline security policy. Once this enforcement label is applied, the API server will reject any Pod creation request in that namespace if a container's security context explicitly sets allowPrivilegeEscalation: true. Replace \<user-workload-namespace\> with the name of your own namespace:
```
kubectl label namespace <user-workload-namespace> pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=baseline
```
The command output should return the name of the labeled user-workload-namespace:
```
namespace/<user-workload-namespace> labeled
```

References

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation
Overview of Kubernetes Engine (OKE)
Managing Kubernetes Clusters
Setting Up Cluster Access
Accessing a Cluster Using Kubectl
About Access Control and Kubernetes Engine (OKE)

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure CLI Documentation
compartment list
cluster list
cluster create-kubeconfig

Kubernetes Documentation
Pod Security Admission

Publication date Dec 11, 2025

Audit

Using OCI CLI

Remediation / Resolution

Using OCI CLI

References

Related OCI-OKE rules