Demo: Automating secret rotation in Kubernetes

• Event: Open Source Summit North America 2023
• Date: 2023-05-12
• Slides

This repository contains minimal code for demonstrating how External Secrets and Reloader work.

Prerequisites

• Ability to setup a Kubernetes cluster (eg. using KinD)
• kubectl
• kubectl view-secret plugin
• kustomize
• Helm
• vault CLI

Make sure the following repositories are added to Helm (and up-to-date):

helm repo add banzaicloud-stable https://kubernetes-charts.banzaicloud.com

helm repo add external-secrets https://charts.external-secrets.io

helm repo add stakater https://stakater.github.io/stakater-charts

helm repo update

Preparations

Set up a new Kubernetes cluster using the tools of your choice.

This guide uses KinD:

kind create cluster

The rest of the instructions assume your current context is set to your demo cluster.

Install the Vault operator:

helm upgrade --install --wait --namespace vault-system --create-namespace vault-operator banzaicloud-stable/vault-operator

Install the mutating webhook:

helm upgrade --install --wait --namespace vault-system --create-namespace vault-secrets-webhook banzaicloud-stable/vault-secrets-webhook

Install a new Vault instance:

kustomize build deploy/vault | kubectl apply -f -

sleep 2
kubectl -n vault wait pods vault-0 --for condition=Ready --timeout=120s # wait for Vault to become ready

Set the Vault token from the Kubernetes secret:

export VAULT_TOKEN=$(kubectl -n vault get secrets vault-unseal-keys -o jsonpath={.data.vault-root} | base64 --decode)

Tell the CLI where Vault is listening (optional: this should be the default):

export VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200

Port forward to the Vault service:

kubectl -n vault port-forward service/vault 8200 1>/dev/null &

Check access to Vault:

vault kv get secret/foo/bar

Alternatively, open the UI (and login with the root token):

open $VAULT_ADDR

Install External Secrets Operator:

helm upgrade --install --wait --namespace external-secrets --create-namespace --set installCRDs=true external-secrets external-secrets/external-secrets

Install Reloader:

helm upgrade --install --wait --namespace reloader --create-namespace reloader stakater/reloader

Demo

Deploy the demo application:

kustomize build deploy/demo | kubectl apply -f -

kubectl wait deploy http-echo --for condition=Available=true --timeout=60s # wait for the application to become ready

(The above command also configures ESO to use Vault as a secret store)

Demo #1

Notice how a secret called foobar is created:

kubectl get secret

Expected output:

NAME     TYPE     DATA   AGE
foobar   Opaque   1      6s

Check the content of the secret:

kubectl view-secret foobar -a

Expected output:

hello=World

Port forward to the demo service:

kubectl port-forward service/http-echo 8080 1>/dev/null &

Look at the response from the app:

curl localhost:8080/hello

Expected output:

Hello World!

Change the secret value in Vault to everyone:

vault kv put secret/foo/bar hello=everyone

Notice that the content of the secret changed...

kubectl view-secret foobar -a

Expected output:

hello=everyone

...but the response from the app is still the same:

curl localhost:8080/hello

Expected output:

Hello World!

Restart the demo app:

kubectl rollout restart deploy http-echo

(You have to restart the port forward at this point):

kill %2
wait %2
kubectl port-forward service/http-echo 8080 1>/dev/null &

The app should now return a different response:

curl localhost:8080/hello

Expected output:

Hello everyone!

Tell Reloader to start watching the deployment for secret changes:

kubectl annotate deploy http-echo reloader.stakater.com/auto="true"

Change the secret value in the store again to Open Source Summit:

vault kv put secret/foo/bar hello="Open Source Summit"

Notice that the content of the secret changed again...

kubectl view-secret foobar -a

Expected output:

hello=Open Source Summit

(You have to restart the port forward at this point):

kill %2
wait %2
kubectl port-forward service/http-echo 8080 1>/dev/null &

...and the response from the app changed as well:

curl localhost:8080/hello

Expected output:

Hello Open Source Summit!

Demo #2

Look at the Pod (and notice that no mutation happened):

kubectl get pods -o yaml

Look at the value of HELLO_AGAIN environment variable:

curl localhost:8080/env/HELLO_AGAIN

Expected output:

vault:secret/data/foo/bar#hello

Enable mutation to inject secret values:

kubectl patch deploy http-echo --type=json -p='[{"op":"remove","path":"/spec/template/metadata/annotations/vault.security.banzaicloud.io~1mutate"}]'

kubectl rollout status deploy http-echo --timeout=60s # wait for the rollout to finish

(You have to restart the port forward at this point):

kill %2
wait %2
kubectl port-forward service/http-echo 8080 1>/dev/null &

Look at the Pod (and notice a number of mutations: init container, volumes and mounts, entrypoint (command) changed):

kubectl get pods -o yaml

Look at the environment variable values again:

curl localhost:8080/env/HELLO_AGAIN

Expected output:

Open Source Summit

Cleanup

Kill background jobs:

kill %2 # demo app port-forward
kill %1 # vault port-forward

Tear down the Kubernetes cluster:

kind delete cluster