AI Cyber Defense / Cloud, Kubernetes and software supply chain
AI Cyber Defense: Protect cluster admission configuration from unreviewed changes
Define failure behavior and recovery for each admission dependency. Review policy scope and keep a controlled emergency deployment procedure without permanent broad exemption.
Environment and inputs: Cloud control planes, workload identity, Kubernetes clusters, CI/CD pipelines and immutable deployment artifacts; provider support varies.
Scenario and goal
A policy exception or unavailable webhook can change which workloads are admitted.
Why it matters
For this scenario, an attacker can automate permitted API operations after gaining a workload or pipeline identity. Review who can change trust, who can assume the resulting identity and what resources it can reach. Keep source review, build provenance, deployment authorization and runtime permissions as distinct checks. A configuration object or successful deployment does not prove the intended runtime boundary is enforced.
Evidence to collect
Monitor admission configuration revisions, failure policy, webhook availability and the identity changing exemptions.
Validate with an authorized exercise
Exercise a staging webhook outage and a prohibited pod fixture; verify the observed admit or reject behavior matches the documented design and triggers the expected operational alert.
Rollout and checks
Evaluate effective permissions and runtime behavior in a disposable account or namespace before production rollout. Retain the approved source revision, resulting artifact and independent audit trail. Plan recovery if identity, policy or admission dependencies fail. Reconcile running assets after the change because resources created outside the normal pipeline can otherwise remain outside its checks.
Scope and limits
This guide proposes a defensive test; it is not a tested production design. Check platform support and local requirements. References explain the mechanisms but do not certify the design. Behavior alone does not prove AI involvement.