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72 lines
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72 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
---
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layout: docs
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page_title: Secrets Engines
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description: Secrets engines are mountable engines that store or generate secrets in Vault.
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---
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# Secrets Engines
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Secrets engines are components which store, generate, or encrypt data. Secrets
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engines are incredibly flexible, so it is easiest to think about them in terms
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of their function. Secrets engines are provided some set of data, they take some
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action on that data, and they return a result.
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Some secrets engines simply store and read data - like encrypted
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Redis/Memcached. Other secrets engines connect to other services and generate
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dynamic credentials on demand. Other secrets engines provide encryption as a
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service, totp generation, certificates, and much more.
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Secrets engines are enabled at a "path" in Vault. When a request comes to Vault,
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the router automatically routes anything with the route prefix to the secrets
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engine. In this way, each secrets engine defines its own paths and properties.
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To the user, secrets engines behave similar to a virtual filesystem, supporting
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operations like read, write, and delete.
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## Secrets Engines Lifecycle
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Most secrets engines can be enabled, disabled, tuned, and moved via the CLI or
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API. Previous versions of Vault called these "mounts", but that term was
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overloaded.
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- **Enable** - This enables a secrets engine at a given path. With few
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exceptions, secrets engines can be enabled at multiple paths. Each secrets
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engine is isolated to its path. By default, they are enabled at their "type"
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(e.g. "aws" enables at "aws/").
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- **Disable** - This disables an existing secrets engine. When a secrets engine
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is disabled, all of its secrets are revoked (if they support it), and all of
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the data stored for that engine in the physical storage layer is deleted.
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- **Move** - This moves the path for an existing secrets engine. This process
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revokes all secrets, since secret leases are tied to the path they were
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created at. The configuration data stored for the engine persists through the
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move.
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- **Tune** - This tunes global configuration for the secrets engine such as the
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TTLs.
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Once a secrets engine is enabled, you can interact with it directly at its path
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according to its own API. Use `vault path-help` to determine the paths it
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responds to.
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Note that mount points cannot conflict with each other in Vault. There are
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two broad implications of this fact. The first is that you cannot have
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a mount which is prefixed with an existing mount. The second is that you
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cannot create a mount point that is named as a prefix of an existing mount.
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As an example, the mounts `foo/bar` and `foo/baz` can peacefully coexist
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with each other whereas `foo` and `foo/baz` cannot
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## Barrier View
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Secrets engines receive a _barrier view_ to the configured Vault physical
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storage. This is a lot like a [chroot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroot).
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When a secrets engine is enabled, a random UUID is generated. This becomes the
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data root for that engine. Whenever that engine writes to the physical storage
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layer, it is prefixed with that UUID folder. Since the Vault storage layer
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doesn't support relative access (such as `../`), this makes it impossible for an
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enabled secrets engine to access other data.
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This is an important security feature in Vault - even a malicious engine
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cannot access the data from any other engine.
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