Audit Annotations

This page serves as a reference for the audit annotations of the kubernetes.io namespace. These annotations apply to Event object from API group audit.k8s.io.

Note: The following annotations are not used within the Kubernetes API. When you enable auditing in your cluster, audit event data is written using Event from API group audit.k8s.io. The annotations apply to audit events. Audit events are different from objects in the Event API (API group events.k8s.io).

pod-security.kubernetes.io/exempt

Example: pod-security.kubernetes.io/exempt: namespace

Value must be one of user, namespace, or runtimeClass which correspond to Pod Security Exemption dimensions. This annotation indicates on which dimension was based the exemption from the PodSecurity enforcement.

pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-policy

Example: pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-policy: restricted:latest

Value must be privileged:<version>, baseline:<version>, restricted:<version> which correspond to Pod Security Standard levels accompanied by a version which must be latest or a valid Kubernetes version in the format v<MAJOR>.<MINOR>. This annotations informs about the enforcement level that allowed or denied the pod during PodSecurity admission.

See Pod Security Standards for more information.

pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit-violations

Example: pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit-violations: would violate PodSecurity "restricted:latest": allowPrivilegeEscalation != false (container "example" must set securityContext.allowPrivilegeEscalation=false), ...

Value details an audit policy violation, it contains the Pod Security Standard level that was transgressed as well as the specific policies on the fields that were violated from the PodSecurity enforcement.

See Pod Security Standards for more information.

authorization.k8s.io/decision

Example: authorization.k8s.io/decision: "forbid"

This annotation indicates whether or not a request was authorized in Kubernetes audit logs.

See Auditing for more information.

authorization.k8s.io/reason

Example: authorization.k8s.io/reason: "Human-readable reason for the decision"

This annotation gives reason for the decision in Kubernetes audit logs.

See Auditing for more information.

missing-san.invalid-cert.kubernetes.io/$hostname

Example: missing-san.invalid-cert.kubernetes.io/example-svc.example-namespace.svc: "relies on a legacy Common Name field instead of the SAN extension for subject validation"

Used by Kubernetes version v1.24 and later

This annotation indicates a webhook or aggregated API server is using an invalid certificate that is missing subjectAltNames. Support for these certificates was disabled by default in Kubernetes 1.19, and removed in Kubernetes 1.23.

Requests to endpoints using these certificates will fail. Services using these certificates should replace them as soon as possible to avoid disruption when running in Kubernetes 1.23+ environments.

There’s more information about this in the Go documentation: X.509 CommonName deprecation.

insecure-sha1.invalid-cert.kubernetes.io/$hostname

Example: insecure-sha1.invalid-cert.kubernetes.io/example-svc.example-namespace.svc: "uses an insecure SHA-1 signature"

Used by Kubernetes version v1.24 and later

This annotation indicates a webhook or aggregated API server is using an insecure certificate signed with a SHA-1 hash. Support for these insecure certificates is disabled by default in Kubernetes 1.24, and will be removed in a future release.

Services using these certificates should replace them as soon as possible, to ensure connections are secured properly and to avoid disruption in future releases.

There’s more information about this in the Go documentation: Rejecting SHA-1 certificates.

validation.policy.admission.k8s.io/validation_failure

Example: validation.policy.admission.k8s.io/validation_failure: '[{"message": "Invalid value", {"policy": "policy.example.com", {"binding": "policybinding.example.com", {"expressionIndex": "1", {"validationActions": ["Audit"]}]'

Used by Kubernetes version v1.27 and later.

This annotation indicates that a admission policy validation evaluted to false for an API request, or that the validation resulted in an error while the policy was configured with failurePolicy: Fail.

The value of the annotation is a JSON object. The message in the JSON provides the message about the validation failure.

The policy, binding and expressionIndex in the JSON identifies the name of the ValidatingAdmissionPolicy, the name of the ValidatingAdmissionPolicyBinding and the index in the policy validations of the CEL expressions that failed, respectively.

The validationActions shows what actions were taken for this validation failure. See Validating Admission Policy for more details about validationActions.