Attacking Managed Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS)

Managed Kubernetes is a special target because it operates across two independent authorization planes: the cloud provider's IAM layer and Kubernetes' own RBAC layer. Each plane has its own identities, policies, and trust boundaries. The escalation paths live at the seams -- where a Kubernetes service account maps to a cloud IAM role, where a pod inherits a node's cloud credentials via the instance metadata service, or where a cluster-admin binding was granted through a cloud identity mapping that nobody audits. An attacker who understands only one plane misses the paths that cross into the other.

Only against systems you are authorized to test.

When to Use