2022-11-07 15:52:54 +11:00

5.7 KiB

Introduction to Sealed Secrets

Checkout the Sealed Secrets GitHub Repo

Create a kubernetes cluster

In this guide we we''ll need a Kubernetes cluster for testing. Let's create one using kind

kind create cluster --name sealedsecrets --image kindest/node:v1.23.5

See cluster up and running:

kubectl get nodes
NAME                  STATUS   ROLES                  AGE     VERSION
sealedsecrets-control-plane   Ready    control-plane,master   2m12s   v1.23.5

Run a container to work in

run Alpine Linux:

docker run -it --rm -v ${HOME}:/root/ -v ${PWD}:/work -w /work --net host alpine sh

install kubectl

apk add --no-cache curl
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/`curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt`/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
chmod +x ./kubectl
mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

test cluster access:

/work # kubectl get nodes
NAME                    STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
sealedsecrets-control-plane   Ready    control-plane,master   3m26s   v1.23.5

Install Sealed Secret Controller

download the YAML

In this demo we'll use version 0.19.1 of the sealed secrets controller downloaded from the Github releases page

curl -L -o ./kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/controller-v0.19.1.yaml https://github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets/releases/download/v0.19.1/controller.yaml

alternative install Helm

TODO: cover helm https://github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets#helm-chart

install the controller

kubectl apply -f kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/controller-v0.19.1.yaml

Check the install

kubectl -n kube-system get pods

TODO: check the logs with kubectl -n kube-system logs command

TODO: important logs

2022/11/05 21:38:20 New key written to kube-system/sealed-secrets-keymwzn9
2022/11/05 21:38:20 Certificate is
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
 < cert content >
 -----END CERTIFICATE-----

2022/11/05 21:38:20 HTTP server serving on :808

TODO: check our secret

kubectl get secret -n kube-system sealed-secrets-keymwzn9 -o yaml

Download KubeSeal

The same way we downloaded the sealed secrets controller from the GitHub releases page, we'll want to download kubeseal from the assets section


curl -L -o /tmp/kubeseal.tar.gz \
https://github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets/releases/download/v0.19.1/kubeseal-0.19.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz

apk add tar
tar -xzf /tmp/kubeseal.tar.gz -C /tmp/

chmod +x /tmp/kubeseal
mv /tmp/kubeseal /usr/local/bin/

run kubeseal

We can now run kubeseal --help

Sealing a basic Kubernetes Secret

Looks at our existing Kubernetes secret YAML

cat kubernetes/secrets/secret.yaml 

Create a sealed secret using stdin

 cat kubernetes/secrets/secret.yaml | kubeseal -o yaml  > kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/sealed-secret.yaml

Create a sealed secret using file

kubeseal -f kubernetes/secrets/secret.yaml -o yaml > kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/sealed-secret.yaml

Deploy the sealed secret

kubectl apply -f kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/sealed-secret.yaml
sealedsecret.bitnami.com/mysecret created

Now few seconds later, see the secret

kubectl -n default get secret
NAME                  TYPE                                  DATA   AGE
mysecret              Opaque                                1      25s

How the encryption key is managed

TODO: How the encryption key is managed and stored

TODO: Set a duration to test --key-renew-period=<value>

apk add nano
export KUBE_EDITOR=nano

Set the flag on the command like so to add a new key every 5 min for testing:

spec:
  containers:
  - command:
    - controller
    - --key-renew-period=5m

kubectl edit deployment/sealed-secrets-controller --namespace=kube-system

You should see a new key created under secrets in the kube-system namespace

kubectl -n kube-system get secrets

Backup your encryption keys

TODO: * backup encryption keys TODO: migrating kubernetes clusters

kubectl get secret -n kube-system \
  -l sealedsecrets.bitnami.com/sealed-secrets-key \
  -o yaml \
  >  kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/sealed-secret-keys.key

Migrate your encryption keys to a new cluster

Delete & Deploy a new Kubernetes cluster

kind delete cluster --name sealedsecrets
kind create cluster --name sealedsecrets --image kindest/node:v1.23.5

# check the cluster
kubectl get nodes

# redeploy sealed-secrets controller
kubectl apply -f kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/controller-v0.19.1.yaml

kubectl -n kube-system get pods

restore our encryption keys

kubectl apply -f kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/sealed-secret-keys.key

restart the controller:

kubectl delete pod -n kube-system -l name=sealed-secrets-controller

apply our old sealed secret

kubectl apply -f kubernetes/secrets/sealed-secrets/sealed-secret.yaml

TODO: Encrypted sealed secrets across namespaces https://github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets#scopes

Re-encrypting secrets with the latest key

kubeseal --re-encrypt <my_sealed_secret.json >tmp.json \
  && mv tmp.json my_sealed_secret.json