Configuring a Kubernetes service account to assume an IAM role

To associate an IAM role with a Kubernetes service account

1. If you want to associate an existing IAM policy to your IAM role, skip to the next step.

   Create an IAM policy. You can create your own policy, or copy an Amazon managed policy that already grants some of the permissions that you need and customize it to your specific requirements. For more information, see Creating IAM policies in the IAM User Guide.

   1. Create a file that includes the permissions for the Amazon Web Services that you want your pods to access. For a list of all actions for all Amazon Web Services, see the Service Authorization Reference.

      You can run the following command to create an example policy file that allows read-only access to an Amazon S3 bucket. You can optionally store configuration information or a bootstrap script in this bucket, and the containers in your pod can read the file from the bucket and load it into your application. If you want to create this example policy, copy the following contents to your device. Replace my-pod-secrets-bucket with your bucket name and run the command.

      cat >my-policy.json <<EOF
      {
          "Version": "2012-10-17",
          "Statement": [
              {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Action": "s3:GetObject",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-pod-secrets-bucket"
              }
          ]
      }
      EOF

   2. Create the IAM policy.

      aws iam create-policy --policy-name my-policy --policy-document file://my-policy.json

2. Create an IAM role and associate it with a Kubernetes service account. You can use either eksctl or the Amazon CLI.

   eksctl

   Prerequisite

   Version 0.135.0 or later of the eksctl command line tool installed on your device or Amazon CloudShell. To install or update eksctl, see Installing or updating eksctl.

   Replace my-service-account with the name of the Kubernetes service account that you want eksctl to create and associate with an IAM role. Replace default with the namespace that you want eksctl to create the service account in. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster. Replace my-role with the name of the role that you want to associate the service account to. If it doesn't already exist, eksctl creates it for you. Replace 111122223333 with your account ID and my-policy with the name of an existing policy.

   eksctl create iamserviceaccount --name my-service-account --namespace default --cluster my-cluster --role-name "my-role" \
       --attach-policy-arn arn:aws-cn:iam::111122223333:policy/my-policy --approve

   Important

   • If the role or service account already exist, the previous command might fail. Eksctl has different options that you can provide in those situations. For more information run eksctl create iamserviceaccount --help.

   • Before using the service account with a pod, the service account that you specified or that eksctl created must be bound to an existing Kubernetes role, or clusterrole that includes the Kubernetes permissions that you require for the service account. For more information, see Using RBAC Authorization in the Kubernetes documentation.

   Amazon CLI

   1. If you have an existing Kubernetes service account that you want to assume an IAM role, then you can skip this step.

      Create a Kubernetes service account. Copy the following contents to your device. Replace my-service-account with your desired name and default with a different namespace, if necessary. If you change default, the namespace must already exist.

      cat >my-service-account.yaml <<EOF
      apiVersion: v1
      kind: ServiceAccount
      metadata:
        name: my-service-account
        namespace: default
      EOF
      kubectl apply -f my-service-account.yaml

      Important

      Before using the service account with a pod, the service account that you created must be bound to an existing Kubernetes role, or clusterrole that includes the Kubernetes permissions that you require for the service account. For more information, see Using RBAC Authorization in the Kubernetes documentation.

   2. Set your Amazon Web Services account ID to an environment variable with the following command.

      account_id=$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query "Account" --output text)

   3. Set your cluster's OIDC identity provider to an environment variable with the following command. Replace my-cluster with the name of your cluster.

      oidc_provider=$(aws eks describe-cluster --name my-cluster --region $AWS_REGION --query "cluster.identity.oidc.issuer" --output text | sed -e "s/^https:\/\///")

   4. Set variables for the namespace and name of the service account. Replace my-service-account with the Kubernetes service account that you want to assume the role. Replace default with the namespace of the service account.

      export namespace=default
      export service_account=my-service-account

   5. Run the following command to create a trust policy file for the IAM role. If you want to allow all service accounts within a namespace to use the role, then copy the following contents to your device. Replace StringEquals with StringLike and replace $service_account with *. You can add multiple entries in the StringEquals or StringLike conditions to allow multiple service accounts or namespaces to assume the role. To allow roles from a different Amazon Web Services account than the account that your cluster is in to assume the role, see Cross-account IAM permissions for more information.

      cat >trust-relationship.json <<EOF
      {
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
          {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
              "Federated": "arn:aws-cn:iam::$account_id:oidc-provider/$oidc_provider"
            },
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity",
            "Condition": {
              "StringEquals": {
                "$oidc_provider:aud": "sts.amazonaws.com",
                "$oidc_provider:sub": "system:serviceaccount:$namespace:$service_account"
              }
            }
          }
        ]
      }
      EOF

   6. Create the role. Replace my-role with a name for your IAM role, and my-role-description with a description for your role.

      aws iam create-role --role-name my-role --assume-role-policy-document file://trust-relationship.json --description "my-role-description"

   7. Attach an IAM policy to your role. Replace my-role with the name of your IAM role and my-policy with the name of an existing policy that you created.

      aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name my-role --policy-arn=arn:aws-cn:iam::$account_id:policy/my-policy

   8. Annotate your service account with the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the IAM role that you want the service account to assume. Replace my-role with the name of your existing IAM role. Suppose that you allowed a role from a different Amazon Web Services account than the account that your cluster is in to assume the role in a previous step. Then, make sure to specify the Amazon Web Services account and role from the other account. For more information, see Cross-account IAM permissions.

      kubectl annotate serviceaccount -n $namespace $service_account eks.amazonaws.com.cn/role-arn=arn:aws-cn:iam::$account_id:role/my-role

3. Confirm that the role and service account are configured correctly.

   1. Confirm that the IAM role's trust policy is configured correctly.

      aws iam get-role --role-name my-role --query Role.AssumeRolePolicyDocument

      The example output is as follows.

      {
          "Version": "2012-10-17",
          "Statement": [
              {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Principal": {
                      "Federated": "arn:aws-cn:iam::111122223333:oidc-provider/oidc.eks.region-code.amazonaws.com.cn/id/EXAMPLED539D4633E53DE1B71EXAMPLE"
                  },
                  "Action": "sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity",
                  "Condition": {
                      "StringEquals": {
                          "oidc.eks.region-code.amazonaws.com.cn/id/EXAMPLED539D4633E53DE1B71EXAMPLE:sub": "system:serviceaccount:default:my-service-account",
                          "oidc.eks.region-code.amazonaws.com.cn/id/EXAMPLED539D4633E53DE1B71EXAMPLE:aud": "sts.amazonaws.com"
                      }
                  }
              }
          ]
      }

   2. Confirm that the policy that you attached to your role in a previous step is attached to the role.

      aws iam list-attached-role-policies --role-name my-role --query AttachedPolicies[].PolicyArn --output text

      The example output is as follows.

      arn:aws-cn:iam::111122223333:policy/my-policy

   3. Set a variable to store the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the policy that you want to use. Replace my-policy with the name of the policy that you want to confirm permissions for.

      export policy_arn=arn:aws-cn:iam::111122223333:policy/my-policy

   4. View the default version of the policy.

      aws iam get-policy --policy-arn $policy_arn
      

      The example output is as follows.

      {
          "Policy": {
              "PolicyName": "my-policy",
              "PolicyId": "EXAMPLEBIOWGLDEXAMPLE",
              "Arn": "arn:aws-cn:iam::111122223333:policy/my-policy",
              "Path": "/",
              "DefaultVersionId": "v1",
              ...
          }
      }

   5. View the policy contents to make sure that the policy includes all the permissions that your pod needs. If necessary, replace 1 in the following command with the version that's returned in the previous output.

      aws iam get-policy-version --policy-arn $policy_arn --version-id v1

      The example output is as follows.

      {
          "Version": "2012-10-17",
          "Statement": [
              {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Action": "s3:GetObject",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-pod-secrets-bucket"
              }
          ]
      }

      If you created the example policy in a previous step, then your output is the same. If you created a different policy, then the example content is different.

   6. Confirm that the Kubernetes service account is annotated with the role.

      kubectl describe serviceaccount my-service-account -n default

      The example output is as follows.

      Name:                my-service-account
      Namespace:           default
      Annotations:         eks.amazonaws.com.cn/role-arn: arn:aws-cn:iam::111122223333:role/my-role
      Image pull secrets:  <none>
      Mountable secrets:   my-service-account-token-qqjfl
      Tokens:              my-service-account-token-qqjfl
      ...

4. (Optional) Configuring the Amazon Security Token Service endpoint for a service account. Amazon recommends using a regional Amazon STS endpoint instead of the global endpoint. This reduces latency, provides built-in redundancy, and increases session token validity.