[EKS] [request]: Cedar for Kubernetes in Amazon EKS

[micahhausler]

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Tell us about your request
Integrate Cedar access controls for Kubernetes into Amazon EKS

Which service(s) is this request for?
EKS

Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?
Kubernetes RBAC has well-known limitations in being allow-only (no denials), no conditions, and no attribute-based controls.

Are you currently working around this issue?
Many customers use Open Policy Agent/Gatekeeper, Kyverno, or K8s Validating Admission Policies to restrict permissions

Additional context
AWS open sourced Cedar access controls for Kubernetes (blog post) in October 2024, but as authorization webhooks are not customer configurable in EKS (#1932), AWS would have to integrate Cedar into EKS for customers to use it.

[sftim]

[I believe that] AWS could wrap authz callouts so that cluster maintenance operations (by AWS) are always allowed, but all other requests are checked.

Adding that would let you deploy your own Cedar implementation and use it for authz.