Security Self Assessment: [STRIDE-DOS-2] Misuse of Infra Admin credentials to create unlimited number of clusters

[PushkarJ]

User Story

As an operator, I would like to apply soft/hard limits on maximum number of clusters so that I don't end up exhausting available capacity
As an operator, I would like to apply rate limits on clusterctl and underlying APIs on concurrent and successive requests to create new clusters so that I don't end up creating large number of clusters in short period of time exhausting available capacity

Detailed Description

Snippet from Cluster API security self-assessment: kubernetes/sig-security#40

STRIDE-DOS-2 - Misuse of Infra Admin credentials to create unlimited number of clusters
Infra Admin credentials can be misused by someone who has access to it by accidentally or maliciously creating very large number of clusters to exhaust capacity or slow down the operations team or for financial damage caused due to surprise bills

STRIDE-DOS-2 Recommended Mitigations

• Create safe defaults (soft and hard) for the maximum number of clusters that can be created using a management cluster
• Apply rate limits on clusterctl and underlying APIs on concurrent and successive requests to create new clusters can be processed using the same Infra admin
• Implement threshold based alerts when a particular soft limit is exceeded for number of clusters

Alerting can be done by end users once these limits are set

/kind feature
/sig security
/area security

[fabriziopandini]

/milestone v1.2

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/lifecycle stale

[fabriziopandini]

/lifecycle frozen
/triage accepted
/help

Still a valid point to document some general best practices, but providing specific guidance for each cloud infrastructure should be addressed by cloud providers

I'm not sure that we can/we should apply rate limits on clusterctl and underlying APIs on concurrent and successive requests because technically complex; also it does not prevents to use of credentials in other ways so it doesn't solve the problem
IMO the only real solution to avoid this risk is to rely on infrastructure quota management

[k8s-ci-robot]

@fabriziopandini:
This request has been marked as needing help from a contributor.

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In response to this:

/lifecycle frozen
/triage accepted
/help

Still a valid point to document some general best practices, but providing specific guidance for each cloud infrastructure should be addressed by cloud providers

I'm not sure that we can/we should apply rate limits on clusterctl and underlying APIs on concurrent and successive requests because technically complex; also it does not prevents to use of credentials in other ways so it doesn't solve the problem
IMO the only real solution to avoid this risk is to rely on infrastructure quota management

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[k8s-triage-robot]

This issue has not been updated in over 1 year, and should be re-triaged.

You can:

• Confirm that this issue is still relevant with /triage accepted (org members only)
• Close this issue with /close

For more details on the triage process, see https://www.kubernetes.dev/docs/guide/issue-triage/

/remove-triage accepted

[fabriziopandini]

/priority backlog

[fabriziopandini]

I'm collapsing this issue into #6152 to see if we can make some progess
/close

[k8s-ci-robot]

@fabriziopandini: Closing this issue.

In response to this:

I'm collapsing this issue into #6152 to see if we can make some progess
/close

Instructions for interacting with me using PR comments are available here. If you have questions or suggestions related to my behavior, please file an issue against the kubernetes/test-infra repository.