helm-external-secrets/docs/provider/conjur.md

CyberArk Secrets Manager Provider

This section describes how to set up the CyberArk Secrets Manager provider for External Secrets Operator (ESO). For a working example, see the Accelerator-K8s-External-Secrets repo.

Prerequisites

Before installing the Secrets Manager provider, you need:

• A running instance of Conjur OSS or CyberArk Secrets Manager, with:
  • An accessible Secrets Manager endpoint (for example: https://myapi.example.com).
  • Your configured Secrets Manager authentication info (such as hostid, apikey, or JWT service ID). For more information on configuring Secrets Manager, see Policy statement reference.
  • Support for your authentication method (apikey is supported by default, jwt requires additional configuration).
  • Optional: Secrets Manager server certificate (see below).
• A Kubernetes cluster with ESO installed.

Secrets Manager server certificate

If you set up your Secrets Manager server with a self-signed certificate, we recommend that you populate the caBundle field with the Secrets Manager self-signed certificate in the secret-store definition. The certificate CA must be referenced in the secret-store definition using either caBundle or caProvider:

{% include 'conjur-ca-bundle.yaml' %}

External secret store

The Secrets Manager provider is configured as an external secret store in ESO. The Secrets Manager provider supports these two methods to authenticate to Secrets Manager:

• apikey: uses a Secrets Manager hostid and apikey to authenticate with Secrets Manager
• jwt: uses a JWT to authenticate with Secrets Manager

Option 1: External secret store with apiKey authentication

This method uses a Secrets Manager hostid and apikey to authenticate with Secrets Manager. It is the simplest method to set up and use because your Secrets Manager instance requires no additional configuration.

Step 1: Define an external secret store

!!! Tip

Save as the file as: `conjur-secret-store.yaml`

{% include 'conjur-secret-store-apikey.yaml' %}

Step 2: Create Kubernetes secrets for Secrets Manager credentials

To connect to the Secrets Manager server, the ESO Secrets Manager provider needs to retrieve the apikey credentials from K8s secrets.

!!! Note

For more information about how to create K8s secrets, see [Creating a secret](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/#creating-a-secret).

Here is an example of how to create K8s secrets using the kubectl command:

# This is all one line
kubectl -n external-secrets create secret generic conjur-creds --from-literal=hostid=MYCONJURHOSTID --from-literal=apikey=MYAPIKEY

# Example:
# kubectl -n external-secrets create secret generic conjur-creds --from-literal=hostid=host/data/app1/host001 --from-literal=apikey=321blahblah

!!! Note

`conjur-creds` is the `name` defined in the `userRef` and `apikeyRef` fields of the `conjur-secret-store.yml` file.

Step 3: Create the external secrets store

!!! Important

Unless you are using a [ClusterSecretStore](../api/clustersecretstore.md), credentials must reside in the same namespace as the SecretStore.

# WARNING: creates the store in the "external-secrets" namespace, update the value as needed
#
kubectl apply -n external-secrets -f conjur-secret-store.yaml

# WARNING: running the delete command will delete the secret store configuration
#
# If there is a need to delete the external secretstore
# kubectl delete secretstore -n external-secrets conjur

Option 2: External secret store with JWT authentication

This method uses JWT tokens to authenticate with Secrets Manager. You can use the following methods to retrieve a JWT token for authentication:

• JWT token from a referenced Kubernetes service account
• JWT token stored in a Kubernetes secret

Step 1: Define an external secret store

When you use JWT authentication, the following must be specified in the SecretStore:

• account - The name of the Secrets Manager account
• serviceId - The ID of the JWT Authenticator WebService configured in Secrets Manager that is used to authenticate the JWT token

You can retrieve the JWT token from either a referenced service account or a Kubernetes secret.

For example, to retrieve a JWT token from a referenced Kubernetes service account, the following secret store definition can be used:

{% include 'conjur-secret-store-jwt-service-account-ref.yaml' %}

!!! Important

This method is only supported in Kubernetes 1.22 and above as it uses the [TokenRequest API](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubernetes-api/authentication-resources/token-request-v1/) to get the JWT token from the referenced service account. Audiences can be defined in the [Secrets Manager JWT authenticator](https://docs.conjur.org/Latest/en/Content/Integrations/k8s-ocp/k8s-jwt-authn.htm).

Alternatively, here is an example where a secret containing a valid JWT token is referenced:

{% include 'conjur-secret-store-jwt-secret-ref.yaml' %}

The JWT token must identify your Secrets Manager host, be compatible with your configured Secrets Manager JWT authenticator, and meet all the Secrets Manager JWT guidelines.

You can use an external JWT issuer or the Kubernetes API server to create the token. For example, a Kubernetes service account token can be created with this command:

kubectl create token my-service-account --audience='https://conjur.company.com' --duration=3600s

Save the secret store file as conjur-secret-store.yaml.

Step 2: Create the external secrets store

# WARNING: creates the store in the "external-secrets" namespace, update the value as needed
#
kubectl apply -n external-secrets -f conjur-secret-store.yaml

# WARNING: running the delete command will delete the secret store configuration
#
# If there is a need to delete the external secretstore
# kubectl delete secretstore -n external-secrets conjur

Define an external secret

After you have configured the Secrets Manager provider secret store, you can fetch secrets from Secrets Manager.

Here is an example of how to fetch a single secret from Secrets Manager:

{% include 'conjur-external-secret.yaml' %}

Save the external secret file as conjur-external-secret.yaml.

Find by Name and Find by Tag

The Secrets Manager provider also supports the Find by Name and Find by Tag ESO features. This means that you can use a regular expression or tags to dynamically fetch multiple secrets from Secrets Manager.

{% include 'conjur-external-secret-find.yaml' %}

If you use these features, we strongly recommend that you limit the permissions of the Secrets Manager host to only the secrets that it needs to access. This is more secure and it reduces the load on both the Secrets Manager server and ESO.

Create the external secret

# WARNING: creates the external-secret in the "external-secrets" namespace, update the value as needed
#
kubectl apply -n external-secrets -f conjur-external-secret.yaml

# WARNING: running the delete command will delete the external-secrets configuration
#
# If there is a need to delete the external secret
# kubectl delete externalsecret -n external-secrets conjur

Get the K8s secret

• Log in to your Secrets Manager server and verify that your secret exists
• Review the value of your Kubernetes secret to verify that it contains the same value as the Secrets Manager server

# WARNING: this command will reveal the stored secret in plain text
#
# Assuming the secret name is "secret00", this will show the value
kubectl get secret -n external-secrets conjur -o jsonpath="{.data.secret00}"  | base64 --decode && echo

See also

• Accelerator-K8s-External-Secrets repo
• Configure Secrets Manager JWT authentication

License

Copyright (c) 2023-2024 CyberArk Software Ltd. All rights reserved.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.