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fix(cilium): run the cilium-operator as non-root - #2437
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The cilium-operator Deployment ran as root (the operator-generic image ships no USER) and failed Kubescape control C-0013 (non-root containers). It is a pure control-plane controller — it reads a read-only config-map and the read-only SPIRE agent socket, has no host filesystem access and binds only high ports — so it runs fine as non-root. Add operator.securityContext (runAsNonRoot + runAsUser/runAsGroup:1000, re-stating the chart-default drop-ALL capabilities and allowPrivilegeEscalation:false because the chart helper replaces the map wholesale rather than merging it) and operator.podSecurityContext (runAsNonRoot + RuntimeDefault seccomp). This touches ONLY the cilium-operator Deployment; the agent, envoy, hubble, clustermesh and spire securityContexts (privileged by design) are unchanged. readOnlyRootFilesystem is intentionally omitted (unverified for the distroless operator image). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThis change adds security hardening configuration to the cilium-operator HelmRelease, introducing ChangesCilium Operator Security Hardening
Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~5 minutes Possibly related issues
🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
✨ Finishing Touches📝 Generate docstrings
🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
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🎉 This PR is included in version 1.97.1 🎉 The release is available on GitHub release Your semantic-release bot 📦🚀 |
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This was referenced Aug 2, 2026
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Why
The Kubescape dashboard flags the cilium-operator as running as root (control C-0013, non-root containers). It's a control-plane controller with no host access and no need for root — its image just ships no USER, so it defaults to root.
What
Runs the cilium-operator only as a non-root user via the chart's operator securityContext values, so it passes C-0013. The cilium agent, envoy, hubble, clustermesh and spire (privileged by design) are untouched.
Promote with care: this is on the pinned pre-release CNI chart (1.20.0-pre.3), and an operator crash-loop would degrade the CNI control plane and SPIRE mTLS resync.
readOnlyRootFilesystemwas intentionally left off (unverified for the distroless operator image). Worth a live check that the operator pods come up healthy after rollout.Part of #2435