AgentRules.org
RulesStacksClientsAuditorPrunerSelf-HealRFCsBenchmarkCLICI/CDAuthorsSubmit
This specification is maintained by the AgentRules Working Group. Have enhancements or want to claim maintainership?Submit Specification →
securitycritical PriorityID: cilium-tetragon-process-threat-telemetry-guardrail

Kernel-Level Tetragon eBPF Telemetry and Privilege Boundary Enforcement

Enforce real-time kernel-space tracing and synchronous threat remediation using Cilium Tetragon TracingPolicies across Kubernetes workloads. Guardrails mandate in-kernel filtering for execution, namespace boundary crossing (setns/unshare), and capability acquisition to eliminate TOCTOU race conditions and user-space ring buffer flooding.

Prohibited Anti-Pattern: Post-Execution Userspace Auditing and Unfiltered Ring Buffer Event Logging

Export Ready-to-Drop Configuration

Select format below to copy code or download file directly.

---
description: Kernel-Level Tetragon eBPF Telemetry and Privilege Boundary Enforcement - Enforce real-time kernel-space tracing and synchronous threat remediation using Cilium Tetragon TracingPolicies across Kubernetes workloads. Guardrails mandate in-kernel filtering for execution, namespace boundary crossing (setns/unshare), and capability acquisition to eliminate TOCTOU race conditions and user-space ring buffer flooding.
globs: deploy/**/*.yaml, k8s/**/*.yaml, infra/**/*.yaml, policies/**/*.yaml
alwaysApply: true
verified_by: "agentrules.org"
license: "CC-BY-4.0"
source: "https://agentrules.org/rules/cilium-tetragon-process-threat-telemetry-guardrail"
---

# Kernel-Level Tetragon eBPF Telemetry and Privilege Boundary Enforcement

> **Severity**: CRITICAL | **Category**: security
> **Anti-Pattern Warning**: Post-Execution Userspace Auditing and Unfiltered Ring Buffer Event Logging

## System Constraints
You are a Principal Security Architect specializing in Linux kernel security and eBPF instrumentation. Enforce synchronous, in-kernel threat detection and mitigation using Cilium Tetragon TracingPolicies. Prevent container escapes, privilege escalation, and interactive shell execution within production workloads by mandating strict in-kernel filtering, namespace isolation audits, and immediate kernel-level termination (Sigkill) on unauthorized operations.

## Strict Guidelines
- Engineers MUST ALWAYS configure Tetragon `TracingPolicy` or `TracingPolicyNamespaced` resources with in-kernel filters (`matchArgs`, `matchNamespaces`, `matchBinaries`) to avoid ring buffer starvation.
- Engineers MUST NOT rely on asynchronous user-space daemon parsing for container escape mitigation; critical isolation breaches (e.g., unauthorized `setns`, `unshare`) MUST enforce `Sigkill` or `Override` kernel actions.
- TracingPolicies MUST instrument kernel functions directly tied to privilege transitions (e.g., `commit_creds`, `cap_capable`) rather than relying exclusively on user-space process names that can be spoofed.
- Components NEVER allow interactive shell binaries (`sh`, `bash`, `ash`) or utility tools (`nc`, `curl`, `wget`) to execute within production workloads without explicit, auditable policy allowances.
- Services MUST scope process telemetry to specific namespaces and pod selectors (`matchLabels`) to maintain low kernel overhead and prevent noisy-neighbor telemetry degradation.

## Bad vs Good Implementations
### Tetragon TracingPolicy for Enforcing Kernel Privilege Boundaries and Namespace Isolation

#### Bad Antipattern (AI Common Hallucination)
> **Why it fails**: This policy attaches an unfiltered kprobe to sys_execve across every process on the host. It lacks in-kernel selectors, allowing untrusted binaries to run to completion while overwhelming the Tetragon daemon with telemetry events.
```yaml
apiVersion: cilium.io/v1alpha1
kind: TracingPolicy
metadata:
  name: audit-privilege-escalation
spec:
  kprobes:
    - call: "sys_execve"
      syscall: true
      args:
        - index: 0
          type: "string"
      # Flaw: Global trace with zero in-kernel filtering or blocking.
      # Floods userspace ring buffer on high-throughput nodes and allows
      # privilege escalation binaries to execute before userspace alerts fire.
```

#### Production Standard (Correct)
> **Standard**: This policy enforces strict in-kernel termination (Sigkill) on unauthorized namespace switches (sys_setns) and unprivileged requests for CAP_SYS_ADMIN, evaluated entirely inside the eBPF runtime without TOCTOU race windows.
```yaml
apiVersion: cilium.io/v1alpha1
kind: TracingPolicyNamespaced
metadata:
  name: block-privilege-escalation-and-escape
  namespace: production
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app.kubernetes.io/tier: backend
  kprobes:
    - call: "sys_setns"
      syscall: true
      args:
        - index: 0
          type: "int"
        - index: 1
          type: "int"
      selectors:
        - matchActions:
            - action: Sigkill
    - call: "cap_capable"
      syscall: false
      args:
        - index: 0
          type: "cred"
        - index: 1
          type: "user_namespace"
        - index: 2
          type: "int"
      selectors:
        - matchArgs:
            - index: 2
              operator: "Equal"
              values:
                - "21" # CAP_SYS_ADMIN
          matchActions:
            - action: Sigkill
```
Recommended MCP Servers (mcp-serverlist.com)

Equip agent with system tools to verify code for this stack.

Kubernetes Cluster Inspector
Inspects and validates live Kubernetes CRDs, verifying Tetragon daemonset deployment and applied TracingPolicy statuses.
Recommended Agent Skills (askills.dev)

Ready-to-use executable skill functions tailored to this stack.

Tetragon CLI Telemetry Auditor
Observes live Tetragon eBPF process execution events, tracepoint triggers, and policy block actions via the gRPC interface.
Architectural Specification & Invariant Rationale

Architectural Invariant Design: Kernel-Level Tetragon eBPF Telemetry and Privilege Boundary Enforcement

Kernel-Level Tetragon eBPF Telemetry and Privilege Boundary Enforcement defines an industrial-grade behavioral standard for security engineering. Enforce real-time kernel-space tracing and synchronous threat remediation using Cilium Tetragon TracingPolicies across Kubernetes workloads. Guardrails mandate in-kernel filtering for execution, namespace boundary crossing (setns/unshare), and capability acquisition to eliminate TOCTOU race conditions and user-space ring buffer flooding. Modern software architectures require strict adherence to deterministic patterns to guarantee high availability, maintainability, and zero security vulnerabilities.

Framework Paradigm Shift & Drift MechanicsLLMs are trained on millions of open-source repositories containing outdated code, legacy idioms, and unpatched antipatterns. When coding assistants generate implementations for this stack, they default to common statistical tokens: Post-Execution Userspace Auditing and Unfiltered Ring Buffer Event Logging Without an explicit system instruction file, developers spend hours debugging silent failures.
Failure Modes & Production Blast Radius

Hazard Analysis: What Breaks Without This Rule

The following failure modes have been cataloged from hundreds of hours of production code reviews where AI assistants produced non-compliant implementations:

Failure ModeAI Symptom (The Anti-Pattern)SeverityProduction Impact & Remedy
AI Hallucination & Deprecation DriftPost-Execution Userspace Auditing and Unfiltered Ring Buffer Event LoggingCritical
Violating this industrial standard introduces regression bugs, security risks, and unexpected runtime failures in production.
Enforce explicit behavioral system directives across all AI coding assistants in your repository.
Silent Architecture InconsistencyAI assistants produce mixed paradigms across files, creating fragmented codebase conventions.Medium
Increases cognitive load during code reviews and leads to maintenance debt across engineering teams.
Pin project conventions in .cursor/rules, CLAUDE.md, and AGENTS.md so all team agents follow identical guardrails.
Architectural Directives in Detail

Step-by-Step Production Directives

Each rule constraint below is injected into the AI agent's system prompt to establish deterministic boundaries:

1

Engineers MUST ALWAYS configure Tetragon `TracingPolicy` or `TracingPolicyNamespaced` resources with in-kernel filters (`matchArgs`, `matchNamespaces`, `matchBinaries`) to avoid ring buffer starvation.

Engineers MUST ALWAYS configure Tetragon `TracingPolicy` or `TracingPolicyNamespaced` resources with in-kernel filters (`matchArgs`, `matchNamespaces`, `matchBinaries`) to avoid ring buffer starvation.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
2

Engineers MUST NOT rely on asynchronous user-space daemon parsing for container escape mitigation

Engineers MUST NOT rely on asynchronous user-space daemon parsing for container escape mitigation; critical isolation breaches (e.g., unauthorized `setns`, `unshare`) MUST enforce `Sigkill` or `Override` kernel actions.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
3

TracingPolicies MUST instrument kernel functions directly tied to privilege transitions (e.g., `commit_creds`, `cap_capable`) rather than relying exclusively on user-space process names that can be spoofed.

TracingPolicies MUST instrument kernel functions directly tied to privilege transitions (e.g., `commit_creds`, `cap_capable`) rather than relying exclusively on user-space process names that can be spoofed.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
4

Components NEVER allow interactive shell binaries (`sh`, `bash`, `ash`) or utility tools (`nc`, `curl`, `wget`) to execute within production workloads without explicit, auditable policy allowances.

Components NEVER allow interactive shell binaries (`sh`, `bash`, `ash`) or utility tools (`nc`, `curl`, `wget`) to execute within production workloads without explicit, auditable policy allowances.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
5

Services MUST scope process telemetry to specific namespaces and pod selectors (`matchLabels`) to maintain low kernel overhead and prevent noisy-neighbor telemetry degradation.

Services MUST scope process telemetry to specific namespaces and pod selectors (`matchLabels`) to maintain low kernel overhead and prevent noisy-neighbor telemetry degradation.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
Technical Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Technical Questions

Common questions developers face when configuring AI coding assistants for this stack:

Q:Why is Kernel-Level Tetragon eBPF Telemetry and Privilege Boundary Enforcement critical for AI coding assistants?

Enforce real-time kernel-space tracing and synchronous threat remediation using Cilium Tetragon TracingPolicies across Kubernetes workloads. Guardrails mandate in-kernel filtering for execution, namespace boundary crossing (setns/unshare), and capability acquisition to eliminate TOCTOU race conditions and user-space ring buffer flooding. Without explicit behavioral boundaries, AI coding assistants (Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, Codex) rely on training data averages, which frequently produce deprecated, inefficient, or vulnerable code patterns.

Q:How does adopting this rule prevent AI hallucinations?

This rule explicitly declares what the AI must avoid (Post-Execution Userspace Auditing and Unfiltered Ring Buffer Event Logging) and prescribes verified positive examples. Grounding the LLM with negative and positive pairs eliminates guesswork.

Q:Which AI coding environments are supported?

This specification is multi-platform compatible: Cursor (.cursor/rules/*.mdc & .cursorrules), Anthropic Claude Code (CLAUDE.md), Windsurf (.windsurfrules), Codex / Cline (AGENTS.md), and GitHub Copilot (.github/copilot-instructions.md).

Q:Can I combine this rule with other technology stacks?

Yes. Use the Interactive Stack Builder or download an Agent Pack to merge this rule with other frontend, backend, database, security, and DevOps rules without syntax collision.

Open Specification · CC BY 4.0·Free for Personal, Team & Commercial In-Repo Use

Citation & Open Source Attribution Guidelines

This specification is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You are completely free to adapt and share this rule in your workspace. If citing, including in public AI benchmark datasets, or redistributing, attribution to AgentRules.org is required.

Related SECURITY Rules

View all rules →
security
105

OpenFGA Graph Invariants: Cyclic Relation Prevention & Contextual Tuple Hardening

Enforces strict directed acyclic graph (DAG) topology validation during relationship mutation writes and mandates strict server-side schema verification for ephemeral contextual tuples in OpenFGA evaluations. Prohibits persistent storage of ephemeral request attributes and guards against recursive relation loops causing graph expansion denial-of-service.

security
81

WebAuthn Conditional UI Mediation, Nonce Atomicity, and Assertion Cryptographic Verification

Enforces zero-trust cryptographic validation for FIDO2/WebAuthn Passkey authentication with Conditional UI autofill. Requires atomic single-use challenge consumption to eliminate replay attacks, strict RP ID hash and origin binding, authenticatorData flag verification (User Presence and User Verification), and monotonic signature counter enforcement to detect authenticator cloning.

security
111

Enforce Sigstore Keyless OIDC Attestation and Admission Controller Verification

Enforces immutable supply-chain security using Sigstore Cosign keyless signing via ephemeral OIDC tokens issued by Fulcio and verified against the Rekor transparency log. Container workloads must be signed and attested at build time by digest, and admission controllers (such as Kyverno or Sigstore Policy Controller) must strictly validate the OIDC issuer and subject identity before allowing image execution.

1 Rule in Stack

Kernel-Level