Tampering
Tampering is the act of changing something in a malicious way. In relation to information security, the goal of tampering is usually to cause one of the following:
- Denial of service: Tampering with the resource to make it unusable
- Elevation of privilege: Tampering with a resource to gain additional privileges
Tampering can be hard to avoid, so a common countermeasure is to make it obvious when something has been tampered with. A common example, outside of information security, is drug packaging. Most over-the-counter drugs are packaged with tamper-proof seals. These make it obvious to the consumer if the product has been tampered with because the tamper-proof seal has been broken.
Let's first look at some of the cluster components that can be tampered with.
Tampering with Kubernetes Components
All of the following Kubernetes components, if tampered with, can cause harm:
- etcd
- Configuration files for the API server, controller manager...