Ingress Resources and Row-Level Security
The query hits the server. The request should pass. But the data that comes back is wrong. Somewhere between ingress and response, row-level security is failing.
Row-level security (RLS) is the final guard between a user and data they should never see. In systems with complex ingress resources—APIs, gateways, and routing rules—it’s common for permissions to get lost in translation. The surface area is wide. Every ingress path is a potential weak point.
An ingress resource defines how external traffic reaches services in a cluster. In Kubernetes, these rules decide which HTTP requests go where. RLS, on the other hand, enforces fine-grained permissions at the database or query layer, filtering results so each row matches the requester’s rights. When these two layers don’t align, you expose data.
Ingress resources can mask subtle bugs. Misconfigured rules might route traffic to a service that bypasses RLS. Or they might forward headers without authentication details, breaking the link between identity and access. This is not theory—it’s common. APIs stitched together from multiple microservices often have inconsistent enforcement across ingress boundaries.
To harden ingress with RLS, start at the map: list all routes and services receiving external traffic. Then trace identity propagation end-to-end. Every ingress rule, reverse proxy, or gateway should preserve authentication tokens or certificates intact. Apply RLS directly inside the service, not just upstream filters. Logging ingress traffic and correlating with RLS enforcement will expose mismatches quickly.
Session management is critical. Stateless ingress combined with RLS must rely on strong, signed tokens that survive hops. When ingress rewrites requests—changing paths or stripping headers—RLS logic can no longer trust the identity claims. Match ingress resource logic to RLS policy definitions, keeping them in sync through deployment automation.
Ingress Resources and Row-Level Security share a common dependency: trust in the routing path. Without precise configuration, one undermines the other. Secure ingress is not just about TLS and routing—it is about delivering requests to only the code paths that can prove every row returned is allowed.
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