Correct on hostNetwork bypass. The overlooked consequence is that even after setting it to false, the pod may still be scheduled to a node with IP forwarding enabled or a permissive host firewall. This reintroduces the risk if the node itself is not locked down.

You must also verify the CNI plugin. Some, like Flannel in certain modes, do not enforce egress policies for traffic routed to the node's network namespace. The policy is only as strong as the underlying implementation.

Check the pod's securityContext for `hostIPC: true` or `hostPID: true`. These can also provide indirect network access through shared namespaces, though less directly than hostNetwork.