Kubernetes in Action

Chapter 12. Securing the Kubernetes API server

This chapter covers

• Understanding authentication
• What ServiceAccounts are and why they’re used
• Understanding the role-based access control (RBAC) plugin
• Using Roles and RoleBindings
• Using ClusterRoles and ClusterRoleBindings
• Understanding the default roles and bindings

In chapter 8 you learned how applications running in pods can talk to the API server to retrieve or change the state of resources deployed in the cluster. To authenticate with the API server, you used the ServiceAccount token mounted into the pod. In this chapter, you’ll learn what ServiceAccounts are and how to configure their permissions, as well as permissions for other subjects using the cluster.

12.1. Understanding authentication ...