---
title: Verify Signed Container Images
content_type: task
min-kubernetes-server-version: v1.24
---

<!-- overview -->

{{< feature-state state="alpha" for_k8s_version="v1.24" >}}

## {{% heading "prerequisites" %}}

These instructions are for Kubernetes {{< skew currentVersion >}}. If you want
to check the integrity of components for a different version of Kubernetes,
check the documentation for that Kubernetes release.

You will need to have the following tools installed:

- `cosign` ([install guide](https://docs.sigstore.dev/cosign/installation/))
- `curl` (often provided by your operating system)

## Verifying image signatures

For a complete list of images that are signed please refer
to [Releases](/releases/download/).

Let's pick one image from this list and verify its signature using
the `cosign verify` command:

```shell
COSIGN_EXPERIMENTAL=1 cosign verify k8s.gcr.io/kube-apiserver-amd64:v1.24.0
```

{{< note >}}
`COSIGN_EXPERIMENTAL=1` is used to allow verification of images signed
in `KEYLESS` mode. To learn more about keyless signing, please refer to
[Keyless Signatures](https://github.com/sigstore/cosign/blob/main/KEYLESS.md#keyless-signatures)
. {{< /note >}}

### Verifying images for all control plane components

To verify all signed control plane images, please run this command:

```shell
curl -Ls https://sbom.k8s.io/$(curl -Ls https://dl.k8s.io/release/latest.txt)/release | grep 'PackageName: k8s.gcr.io/' | awk '{print $2}' > images.txt
input=images.txt
while IFS= read -r image
do
  COSIGN_EXPERIMENTAL=1 cosign verify "$image"
done < "$input"
```

Once you have verified an image, specify that image by its digest in your Pod
manifests as per this
example: `registry-url/image-name@sha256:45b23dee08af5e43a7fea6c4cf9c25ccf269ee113168c19722f87876677c5cb2`
.

For more information, please refer
to [Image Pull Policy](/docs/concepts/containers/images/#image-pull-policy)
section.

## Verifying Image Signatures with Admission Controller

For non-control plane images (
e.g. [conformance image](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/test/conformance/image/README.md))
, signatures can also be verified at deploy time using
[cosigned](https://docs.sigstore.dev/cosign/kubernetes/#cosigned-admission-controller)
admission controller. To get started with `cosigned` here are a few helpful
resources:

* [Installation](https://github.com/sigstore/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/cosigned)
* [Configuration Options](https://github.com/sigstore/cosign/tree/main/config)