When a pod with the requisite annotations is deployed to the cluster, the webhook will update the pod to run the init container. In our PoC, the init container is used to fetch the secret from Secrets Manager and writes it to an emptyDir (RAM disk) volume that is subsequently mounted by the application container. An init container is a container that runs and exits before the application container is started.It’s through the ServiceAccount that you can grant access to secrets in Secrets Manager. This PoC uses IRSA to grant the pod access to retrieve a secret from Secrets Manager and decrypt that secret using a KMS key. IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) is a way to assign an IAM role to a Kubernetes pod.If the /sidecarInjectorWebhook: enabled appears in the annotations field, the webhook will inject the init container into the pod. It is implemented as a pod that runs within the cluster. A mutating webhook is called when a pod is created.In this solution, we’re using it to retrieve the values of a set of key-value pairs in the annotation field of the pod. The Downward API is a mechanism to get metadata about a pod.In this instance, we’re using annotations to enable/disable the init container injector, specify the AWS ARN of the secret. Annotations are an array of non-identifying key-value pairs.This proof of concept (PoC) makes use of the following Kubernetes constructs: Lastly, it gives you the ability to control access to secrets using fine-grained permissions and audit secret rotation centrally for resources in the AWS Cloud, as well as third-party services and resources that run on-premises. It’s also extensible in that you can use it rotate other types of secrets. Second, it offers built-in secret rotation for several AWS services such as Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon DocumentDB. First, it allows you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle. Compared to native Kubernetes Secrets, using Secrets Manager has several advantages. The proof of concept we’ve developed utilizes a similar approach, only rather than using Vault as the backend, secrets are stored and managed in AWS Secrets Manager. Together, these make it easier to consume Vault secrets from within Kubernetes. The Service Account assigns an identity to a pod, which is used to grant access to secrets in Vault whereas the webhook is used to inject an init container into a Pod that mounts the Secret from Vault to a temporary volume. It also integrates with Kubernetes by way of Kubernetes Service Accounts and mutating webhooks. Historically, customers have addressed the shortcomings of Kubernetes Secrets by using an external secret provider like Hashicorp’s Vault, which supports both granular permissions and the automatic rotation of secrets. If you need/want to rotate a secret periodically, you have to do so manually. Second, Kubernetes secrets are not rotated automatically. If pods and secrets share a namespace, pods can read all of the secrets created in that namespace. First, Kubernetes Pods and Secrets are scoped to a namespace. For further information about data encryption for Kubernetes Secrets works, please visit the encrypt data documentation.Īlthough envelope encryption makes Kubernetes Secrets a viable option for storing secret material, there are still a couple of downsides. This is in addition to the full volume encryption that AWS already uses to protect data persisted to etcd. This allows you to strengthen your overall security posture because it creates a dependence on a separate key that is stored outside of Kubernetes. With envelope encryption, you can use a customer-managed AWS KMS key to encrypt the data key Kubernetes uses to encrypt secrets. Recently, EKS added support for KMS envelope encryption of Kubernetes Secrets. It demonstrates how you can consume secrets from an external service (AWS Secrets Manager) using a Kubernetes dynamic admission controller. This was the motivation for creating this PoC. Nevertheless, a lot of customers avoided using Kubernetes Secrets for storing secret material because it did not include an option for strong encryption with a customer managed key when it was first introduced. Conceptually, this allows you to treat secrets differently than other types of Kubernetes objects. Kubernetes allows you to store and manage sensitive information outside of the podSpec using a secret object, e.g.
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