Initial FQDN Selector NPEP with User stories

Author: rahulkjoshi

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npep/npep-133.md

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+# NPEP-133: FQDN Selector for Egress Traffic
+
+* Issue:
+  [#133](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/network-policy-api/issues/133)
+* Status: Provisional
+
+## TLDR
+
+This enhancement proposes adding a new optional selector to specify egress peers
+using [Fully Qualified Domain
+Names](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_qualified_domain_name) (FQDNs).
+
+## Goals
+
+* Provide a selector to specify egress peers using a Fully Qualified Domain Name
+  (for example `kubernetes.io`).
+* Support basic wildcard matching capabilities when specifying FQDNs (for
+  example `*.cloud-provider.io`)
+* Currently only `ALLOW` type rules are proposed.
+  * Safely enforcing `DENY` rules based on FQDN selectors is difficult as there
+    is no guarantee a Network Policy plugin is aware of all IPs backing a FQDN
+    policy. If a Network Policy plugin has incomplete information, it may
+    accidentally allow traffic to an IP belonging to a denied domain. This would
+    constitute a security breach.
+    
+    By contrast, `ALLOW` rules, which may also have an incomplete list of IPs,
+    would not create a security breach. In case of incomplete information, valid
+    traffic would be dropped as the plugin believes the destination IP does not
+    belong to the domain. While this is definitely undesirable, it is at least
+    not an unsafe failure.
+
+* Currently only AdminNetworkPolicy is the intended scope for this proposal.
+  * Since Kubernetes NetworkPolicy does not have a FQDN selector, adding this
+    capability to BaselineAdminNetworkPolicy could result in writing baseline
+    rules that can't be replicated by an overriding NetworkPolicy. For example,
+    if BANP allows traffic to `example.io`, but the namespace admin installs a
+    Kubernetes Network Policy, the namespace admin has no way to replicate the
+    `example.io` selector using just Kubernetes Network Policies.
+
+## Non-Goals
+
+* This enhancement does not include a FQDN selector for allowing ingress
+  traffic.
+* This enhancement does not include any L7 matching or filtering capabilities,
+  like matching HTTP traffic or URL paths.
+  * This selector should not control what DNS records are resolvable from a
+    particular workload.
+* This enhancement does not provide a mechanism for selecting in-cluster
+  endpoints using FQDNs. To select Pods, Nodes, or the API Server,
+  AdminNetworkPolicy has other more specific selectors.
+  * Using the FQDN selector to refer to other Kubernetes endpoints, while not
+    explicitly disallowed, is not defined by this spec and left up to individual
+    providers. Trying to allow traffic to the following domains is NOT
+    guaranteed to work:
+    * `my-svc.my-namespace.svc.cluster.local` (the generated DNS record for a
+      Service)
+    * `my-pod.my-namespace.svc.cluster.local` (the generated DNS record for a
+      Pod)
+* This enhancement does not specify the details of how traffic is routed to the
+  specified destination. For example, it does not prescribe details around NAT
+  or egress gateways.
+* This enhancement does not require any mechanism for securing DNS resolution
+  (e.g. DNSSEC or DNS-over-TLS). Unsecured DNS requests are expected to be
+  sufficient for looking up FQDNs.
+
+## Introduction
+
+FQDN-based egress controls are a common enterprise security practice.
+Administrators often prefer to write security policies using DNS names such as
+“www.kubernetes.io” instead of capturing all the IP addresses the DNS name might
+resolve to. Keeping up with changing IP addresses is a maintenance burden, and
+hampers the readability of the network policies.
+
+## User Stories
+
+* As a cluster admin, I want to allow all Pods in the cluster to send traffic to
+  an external service specified by a well-known domain name. For example, all
+  Pods must be able to talk to `my-service.com`.
+
+* As a cluster admin, I want to allow Pods in the "monitoring" namespace to be
+  able to send traffic to a logs-sink, hosted at `logs-storage.com`
+
+* As a cluster admin, I want to allow all Pods in the cluster to send traffic to
+  any of the managed services provided by my Cloud Provider. Since the cloud
+  provider has a well known parent domain, I want to allow Pods to send traffic
+  to all sub-domains using a wild-card selector -- `*.my-cloud-provider.com`
+
+### Future User Stories
+
+These are some user stories we want to keep in mind, but due to limitations of
+the existing Network Policy API, cannot be implemented currently. The design
+goal in this case is to ensure we do not make these unimplementable down the line.
+
+* As a cluster admin, I want to block all cluster egress traffic by default, and
+  require namespace admins to create NetworkPolicies explicitly allowing egress
+  to the domains they need to talk to.
+
+  The Cluster admin would use a `BaselineAdminNetworkPolicy` object to switch
+  the default disposition of the cluster. Namespace admins would then use
+  a FQDN selector in the Kubernetes `NetworkPolicy` objects to allow
+  `my-service.com`.
+  
+## API
+
+TODO
+
+## Alternatives
+
+### IP Block Selector
+
+IP blocks are an important tool for specifying Network Policies. However, they
+do not address all user needs and have a few short-comings when compared to FQDN
+selectors:
+
+* IP-based selectors can become verbose if a single logical service has numerous
+  IPs backing it.
+* IP-based selectors pose an ongoing maintenance burden for administrators, who
+  need to be aware of changing IPs.
+* IP-based selectors can result in policies that are difficult to read and
+  audit.
+
+### L7 Policy
+
+Another alternative is to provide a true L7 selector, similar to the policies
+provided by Service Mesh providers. While L7 selectors can offer more
+expressivity, they often come trade-offs that are not suitable for all users:
+
+* L7 selectors necessarily support a select set of protocols. Customers may be
+  using a custom protocol for application-level communication, but still want
+  the ability to specify endpoints using DNS.
+* L7 selectors often require proxies to perform deep packet inspection and
+  enforce the policies. These proxies can introduce un-desireable latencies in
+  the datapath of applications.
+
+## References
+
+* [NPEP #126](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/network-policy-api/issues/126):
+  Egress Control in ANP
+
+### Implementations
+
+* [Antrea](https://antrea.io/docs/main/docs/antrea-network-policy/#fqdn-based-filtering)
+* [Calico](https://docs.tigera.io/calico-enterprise/latest/network-policy/domain-based-policy)
+* [Cilium](https://docs.cilium.io/en/latest/security/policy/language/#dns-based)
+* [Open Shift](https://docs.openshift.com/container-platform/latest/networking/openshift_sdn/configuring-egress-firewall.html)
+
+The following is a best-effort breakdown of capabilities of different
+NetworkPolicy providers, as of 2023-09-25. This information may be out-of-date,
+or inaccurate.
+
+|                | Antrea                         | Calico       | Cilium       | OpenShift <br/> (current) | OpenShift <br/> (future) |
+| -------------- | ------------------------------ | ------------ | ------------ | ------------------------- | ------------------------ |
+| Implementation | DNS Snooping <br/> + Async DNS | DNS Snooping | DNS Snooping | Async DNS                 | DNS Snooping             |
+| Wildcards      | ✔                              | ️✔           | ✔            | ❌                         | ✔                        |
+| Egress Rules   | ✔                              | ️✔           | ✔            | ✔                         | ✔                        |
+| Ingress Rules  | ❌                              | ️❌           | ❌            | ❌                         | ❌                        |
+| Allow Rules    | ✔                              | ️✔           | ✔            | ✔                         | ✔                        |
+| Deny Rules     | ✔                              | ️❌(?)        | ❌            | ✔                         | ❌(?)                     |