API Security Big Picture

Learn about Kubernetes API request flow and policy checks for secure access.

We'll cover the following

Kubernetes is API-centric and the API is served through the API server. In this chapter, we’ll follow a typical API request as it passes through various security-related checks.

API security

All of the following make CRUD-style requests to the API server (create, read, update, delete):

  • Operators and developers using kubectl

  • Pods

  • Kubelets

  • Control plane services

  • Kubernetes-native apps

The following figure shows the flow of a typical API request passing through the standard checks. The flow is the same, no matter where the request originates.

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