Combines the features of the two existing plans – threat detection for Kubernetes clusters and vulnerability assessment for images stored in container registries
Brings new and improved features – including multi-cloud support, host level threat detection with over sixty new Kubernetes-aware analytics, and vulnerability assessment for running images
Introduces Kubernetes-native at-scale onboarding – by default, when you enable the plan all relevant components are configured to be deployed automatically
To enable this new plan, please follow the following steps:
To expand the threat protections provided by Microsoft Defender for Kubernetes, we’ve added two preview alerts.
Alert (alert type)
Description
MITRE tactic
Severity
Anomalous pod deployment (Preview) (K8S_AnomalousPodDeployment)
Kubernetes audit log analysis detected pod deployment that is anomalous based on previous pod deployment activity. This activity is considered an anomaly when taking into account how the different features seen in the deployment operation are in relations to one another. The features monitored by this analytics include the container image registry used, the account performing the deployment, day of the week, how often does this account performs pod deployments, user agent used in the operation, is this a namespace which is pod deployment occur to often, or other feature. Top contributing reasons for raising this alert as anomalous activity are detailed under the alert extended properties.
Execution
Medium
Excessive role permissions assigned in Kubernetes cluster (Preview) (K8S_ServiceAcountPermissionAnomaly)
Analysis of the Kubernetes audit logs detected an excessive permissions role assignment to your cluster. From examining role assignments, the listed permissions are uncommon to the specific service account. This detection considers previous role assignments to the same service account across clusters monitored by Azure, volume per permission, and the impact of the specific permission. The anomaly detection model used for this alert takes into account how this permission is used across all clusters monitored by Azure Defender.
During Microsoft Ignite 2021, Microsoft released in general availability the open service mesh add-on for AKS.
Open Service Mesh (OSM) runs an Envoy-based control plane on Kubernetes, can be configured with SMI APIs, and works by injecting an Envoy proxy as a sidecar container next to each instance of your application. The Envoy proxy contains and executes rules around access control policies, implements routing configuration, and captures metrics. The control plane continually configures proxies to ensure policies and routing rules are up to date and ensures proxies are healthy.
OSM provides the following set of capabilities and features to provide a cloud native service mesh for your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters:
OSM has been integrated into the AKS service to provide a fully supported and managed service mesh experience with the convenience of the AKS feature add-on
Secure service to service communication by enabling mTLS
Easily onboard applications onto the mesh by enabling automatic sidecar injection of Envoy proxy
Easily and transparent configurations for traffic shifting on deployments
Ability to define and execute fine grained access control policies for services
Observability and insights into application metrics for debugging and monitoring services
Integration with external certificate management services/solutions with a pluggable interface
OSM can assist your AKS deployments with the following scenarios:
Provide encrypted communications between service endpoints deployed in the cluster
Traffic authorization of both HTTP/HTTPS and TCP traffic in the mesh
Configuration of weighted traffic controls between two or more services for A/B or canary deployments
Collection and viewing of KPIs from application traffic
Deploy an AKS cluster with OSM add-on
az aks create -n <my-osm-aks-cluster-name> -g <my-osm-aks-cluster-rg> --node-osdisk-type Ephemeral --node-osdisk-size 30 --network-plugin azure --enable-managed-identity -a open-service-mesh
Enable OSM AKS add-on for an existing AKS cluster
az aks enable-addons --addons open-service-mesh -g <my-osm-aks-cluster-rg> -n <my-osm-aks-cluster-name>
Validate the AKS OSM add-on installation
az aks list -g <my-osm-aks-cluster-rg> -o json | jq -r '.[].addonProfiles.openServiceMesh.enabled'
Check OSM add-on version
kubectl get deployment -n kube-system osm-controller -o=jsonpath='{$.spec.template.spec.containers[:1].image}'
AKS OSM add-on configuration
kubectl get meshconfig osm-mesh-config -n kube-system -o yaml
Disable OSM AKS add-on for an existing AKS cluster
az aks disable-addons -n <AKS-cluster-name> -g <AKS-resource-group-name> -a open-service-mesh
