18 KiB

Raw Blame History

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
guides	Static Secrets - Guides	guides-secret-mgmt-static-secrets	Vault supports generating new unseal keys as well as rotating the underlying encryption keys. This guide covers rekeying and rotating Vault's encryption keys.

Static Secrets - Key/Value Secret Engine

Vault can be used to store any secret in a secure manner. The secrets may be SSL certificates and keys for your organization's domain, credentials to connect to a corporate database server, etc. Storing such sensitive information in plaintext is not desirable. This guide demonstrates the use case of Vault as a Secret Storage.

Reference Material

Key/Value Secret Engine
Key/Value Secret Engine API
Client libraries for Vault API for commonly used languages

Estimated Time to Complete

10 minutes

Personas

The end-to-end scenario described in this guide involves two personas:

devops with privileged permissions to write secrets
apps reads the secrets from Vault

Challenge

Consider the following situations:

Developers use a single admin account to access a third-party app (e.g. Splunk) and anyone who knows the user ID and password can log in as an admin
SSH keys to connect to remote machines are shared and stored as a plaintext
API keys to invoke external system APIs are stored as a plaintext
An app integrates with LDAP, and its configuration information is in a plaintext

Organizations often seek an uniform workflow to securely store this sensitive information.

Solution

Vault as centralized secret storage to secure any sensitive information. Vault encrypts these secrets using 256-bit AES in GCM mode with a randomly generated nonce prior to writing them to its persistent storage. The storage backend never sees the unencrypted value, so gaining access to the raw storage isn't enough to access your secrets.

~> NOTE: This guide demonstrates secret management using v2 of the KV secret engine.

Prerequisites

To perform the tasks described in this guide, you need to have a Vault environment. Refer to the Getting Started guide to install Vault. Make sure that your Vault server has been initialized and unsealed.

Policy requirements

-> NOTE: For the purpose of this guide, you can use root token to work with Vault. However, it is recommended that root tokens are only used for just enough initial setup or in emergencies. As a best practice, use tokens with appropriate set of policies based on your role in the organization.

To perform all tasks demonstrated in this guide, your policy must include the following permissions:

# Write and manage secrets in key/value secret engine
path "secret/*" {
  capabilities = [ "create", "read", "update", "delete", "list" ]
}

# Create policies to permit apps to read secrets
path "sys/policy/*" {
  capabilities = [ "create", "read", "update", "delete", "list" ]
}

# Create tokens for verification & test
path "auth/token/create" {
  capabilities = [ "create", "update", "sudo" ]
}

If you are not familiar with policies, complete the policies guide.

Steps

This guide demonstrates the basic steps to store secrets using Vault. The scenario here is to store the following secrets:

API key (Google API)
Root certificate of a production database (MySQL)

To store your API key within the configured physical storage for Vault, use the key/value secret engine via secret/ prefixed path.

-> Key/Value secret engine passes through any operation back to the configured storage backend for Vault. For example, if your Vault server is configured with Consul as its storage backend, a "read" operation turns into a read from Consul at the same path.

You will perform the following:

Enable KV Secret Engine v2
Store the Google API key
Store the root certificate for MySQL
Generate a token for apps
Retrieve the secrets

Step 1 through 4 are performed by devops persona. Step 5 describes the commands that apps persona runs to read secrets from Vault.

Step 1: Enable KV Secret Engine v2

(Persona: devops)

Currently, when you start the Vault server in dev mode, it automatically enables v2 of the KV secret engine at secret/. If you start the Vault server in non-dev mode, the default is v1.

If you are running the server in dev mode, skip to Step 2. Otherwise, you must perform one of the following:

Option 1: Upgrade the v1 of KV secret engine to v2
Option 2: Enable the KV secret engine v2 at a different path

CLI command

Option 1: To upgrade from v1 to v2:

$ vault kv enable-versioning secret/

Option 2: To enable the KV secret engine v2 at **`secret_v2/`**:

$ vault secrets enable -path=secret_v2/ kv-v2

$ vault secrets enable -path=secret_v2/ -version=2 kv

API call using cURL

Option 1: To upgrade from v1 to v2:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: <TOKEN>" \
       --request POST \
       --data @payload.json \
       <VAULT_ADDRESS>/v1/sys/mounts/secret/tune

Where <TOKEN> is your valid token, and <VAULT_ADDRESS> is where your vault server is running. The payload.json includes the version information.

Example:

$ cat payload.json
{
  "options": {
      "version": "2"
  }
}

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       --request POST \
       --data @payload.json \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/mounts/secret/tune

Option 2: To enable the KV secret engine v2 at **`secret_v2/`**:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       --request POST \
       --data '{"type":"kv-v2"}' \
       https://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/mounts/secret_v2

~> NOTE: This guide assumes that you are working with KV secret engine v2 which is mounted at secret/.

Step 2: Store the Google API key

(Persona: devops)

Everything after the secret/ path is a key-value pair to write to the secret engine. You can specify multiple values. If the value has a space, you need to surround it with quotes. Having keys with spaces is permitted, but strongly discouraged because it can lead to unexpected client-side behavior.

Let's assume that the path convention in your organization is secret/<OWNER>/apikey/<APP> for API keys. To store the Google API key used by the engineering team, the path would be secret/eng/apikey/Google. If you have an API key for New Relic owned by the DevOps team, the path would look like secret/devops/apikey/New_Relic.

CLI command

To create key/value secrets:

$ vault kv put secret/<PATH> <KEY>=VALUE>

The <PATH> can be anything you want it to be, and your organization should decide on the naming convention that makes most sense.

Example:

$ vault kv put secret/eng/apikey/Google key=AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI
Success! Data written to: secret/eng/apikey/Google

The secret key is "key" and its value is "AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI" in this example.

API call using cURL

Use /secret/data/<PATH> endpoint to create secrets:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: <TOKEN>" \
       --request POST \
       --data @payload.json \
       <VAULT_ADDRESS>/v1/secret/data/<PATH>

Where <TOKEN> is your valid token, and secret/data/<PATH> is the path to your secrets. The payload.json contains the parameters to invoke the endpoint.

Example:

$ tee payload.json <<EOF
{
  "data": {
    "key": "AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI"
  }
}
EOF

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." --request POST \
       --data @payload.json \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret/data/eng/apikey/Google

The secret key is "key" and its value is "AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI" in this example.

Step 3: Store the root certificate for MySQL

(Persona: devops)

For the purpose of this guide, generate a new self-sign certificate using OpenSSL.

$ openssl req --request509 -sha256 -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout selfsigned.key -out cert.pem

Generated cert.pem file:

NOTE: If you don't have OpenSSL, simply copy the above certificate and save it as cert.pem.

CLI command

The command is basically the same as the Google API key example. Now, the path convention for certificates is secret/<ENVIRONMENT>/cert/<SYSTEM>. To store the root certificate for production MySQL, the path becomes secret/staging/cert/postgres.

Example:

$ vault kv put secret/prod/cert/mysql cert=@cert.pem

This example reads the root certificate from a PEM file from the disk, and store it under secret/prod/cert/mysql path.

NOTE: Any value begins with "@" is loaded from a file.

API call using cURL

To perform the same task using the Vault API, pass the token in the request header.

Example:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       --request POST \
       --data @cert.pem \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret/data/prod/cert/mysql

NOTE: Any value begins with "@" is loaded from a file.

Step 4: Generate a token for apps

(Persona: devops)

To read the secrets, apps persona needs "read" permit on those secret engine paths. In this scenario, the apps policy must include the following:

Example: apps-policy.hcl

# Read-only permit
path "secret/data/eng/apikey/Google" {
  capabilities = [ "read" ]  
}

# Read-only permit
path "secret/data/prod/cert/mysql" {
  capabilities = [ "read" ]
}

CLI command

First create apps policy, and generate a token so that you can authenticate as an apps persona, and read the secrets.

# Create "apps" policy
$ vault policy write apps apps-policy.hcl
Policy 'apps' written.

# Create a new token with app policy
$ vault token create -policy="apps"
Key            	Value
---            	-----
token          	e4bdf7dc-cbbf-1bb1-c06c-6a4f9a826cf2
token_accessor 	54700b7e--data828-a6c4-6141-96e71e002bd7
token_duration 	768h0m0s
token_renewable	true
token_policies 	[apps default]

Now, apps can use this token to read the secrets.

API call using cURL

First create an apps policy, and generate a token so that you can authenticate as an app persona.

Example:

# Payload to pass in the API call
$ tee payload.json <<EOF
{
  "policy": "path \"secret/data/eng/apikey/Google\" { capabilities = [ \"read\" ] ...}"
}
EOF

# Create "apps" policy
$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." --request PUT \
       --data @payload.json \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/policy/apps

# Generate a new token with apps policy
$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." --request POST \
       --data '{"policies": ["apps"]}' \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/auth/token/create | jq
{
 "request_id": "e1737bc8-7e51-3943-42a0-2dbd6cb40e3e",
 "lease_id": "",
 "renewable": false,
 "lease_duration": 0,
 "data": null,
 "wrap_info": null,
 "warnings": null,
 "auth": {
   "client_token": "1c97b03a-6098-31cf-9d8b-b404e52dcb4a",
   "accessor": "b10a3eb7-15fe-1924-600e-403cfda34c28",
   "policies": [
     "apps",
     "default"
   ],
   "metadata": null,
   "lease_duration": 2764800,
   "renewable": true,
   "entity_id": ""
 }
}

Now, apps can use this token to read the secrets.

NOTE: For the purpose of this guide, you created a policy for apps persona, and generated a token for it. However, in a real world, you may have a dedicated policy author, or admin to write policies. Also, the consumer of the API key may be different from the consumer of the root certificate. Then each persona would have a policy based on what it needs to access.

Step 5: Retrieve the secrets

(Persona: apps)

Using the token from Step 4, read the Google API key, and root certificate for MySQL.

CLI command

The command to read secret is:

$ vault kv get secret/<PATH>

Example:

# Authenticate with Vault using the generated token first
$ vault login e4bdf7dc-cbbf-1bb1-c06c-6a4f9a826cf2
Successfully authenticated! You are now logged in.
token: e4bdf7dc-cbbf-1bb1-c06c-6a4f9a826cf2
token_duration: 2764277
token_policies: [apps default]

# Read the API key
$ vault kv get secret/eng/apikey/Google
Key             	Value
---             	-----
refresh_interval	768h0m0s
key             	AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI

To return the key value alone, pass -field=key as an argument.

$ vault kv get -field=key secret/eng/apikey/Google
AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI

Root certificate example:

The command is basically the same:

$ vault kv get -field=cert secret/prod/cert/mysql
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEowIBAAKCAQEA6E2Uq0XqreZISgVMUu9pnoMsq+OoK1PI54rsA9vtDE6wiRk0GWhf5vD4DGf1
...

API call using cURL

Use secret/ endpoint to retrieve secrets from key/value secret engine:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: <TOKEN_FROM_STEP3>" \
       --request Get \
       <VAULT_ADDRESS>/v1/secret/data/<PATH>

Example:

Read the Google API key.

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: 1c97b03a-6098-31cf-9d8b-b404e52dcb4a" \
       --request GET \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret/data/eng/apikey/Google | jq
{
"request_id": "5a2005ac-1149-2275-cab3-76cee71bf524",
"lease_id": "",
"renewable": false,
"lease_duration": 2764800,
"data": {
  "key": "AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI"
},
"wrap_info": null,
"warnings": null,
"auth": null
}

NOTE: This example uses jq to parse the JSON output.

Retrieve the key value with jq:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: 1c97b03a-6098-31cf-9d8b-b404e52dcb4a" \
       --request GET \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret/data/eng/apikey/Google | jq ".data.key"

Root certificate example:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: 1c97b03a-6098-31cf-9d8b-b404e52dcb4a" \
       --request GET \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret/data/prod/cert/mysql | jq ".data.cert"

Additional Discussion

Q: How do I enter my secrets without appearing in history?

As a precaution, you may wish to avoid passing your secret as a part of the CLI command so that the secret won't appear in the history file. Here are a few techniques you can use.

Option 1: Use a dash "-"

An easy technique is to use a dash "-" and then press Enter. This allows you to enter the secret in a new line. After entering the secret, press Ctrl+d to end the pipe and write the secret to the Vault.

$ vault kv put secret/eng/apikey/Google key=-

AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI
<Ctrl+d>

Option 2: Read the secret from a file

Using the Google API key example, you can create a file containing the key (apikey.txt):

{
  "key": "AAaaBBccDDeeOTXzSMT1234BB_Z8JzG7JkSVxI"
}

The CLI command would look like:

$ vault kv put secret/eng/apikey/Google @apikey.txt

Option 3: Disable all vault command history

Sometimes, you may not even want the vault command itself to appear in history at all. The Option 1 and Option 2 prevents the secret to appear in the history; however, the vault command, vault kv put secret/eng/apikey/Google will appear in history.

In bash:

$ export HISTIGNORE="&:vault*"

NOTE: This prevents the use of the Up arrow key for command history as well.

Q: How do I save multiple values?

The two examples introduced in this guide only had a single key-value pair. You can pass multiple values in the command.

$ vault kv put secret/dev/config/mongodb url=foo.example.com:35533 db_name=users \
 username=admin password=passw0rd

Or, read the secret from a file:

$ tee mongodb.txt <<EOF
{
    "url": "foo.example.com:35533",
    "db_name": "users",
    "username": "admin",
    "password": "pa$$w0rd"
}
EOF

$ vault kv put secret/dev/config/mongodb @mongodb.txt

Next steps

This guide introduced the CLI commands and API endpoints to read and write secrets in key/value secret engine. To keep it simple, the devops persona generated a token for apps. Read AppRole Pull Authentication guide to learn about programmatically generate a token for apps.

18 KiB Raw Blame History

Static Secrets - Key/Value Secret Engine

Reference Material

Estimated Time to Complete

Personas

Challenge

Solution

Prerequisites

Policy requirements

Steps

Step 1: Enable KV Secret Engine v2

CLI command

API call using cURL

Step 2: Store the Google API key

CLI command

API call using cURL

Step 3: Store the root certificate for MySQL

CLI command

API call using cURL

Step 4: Generate a token for apps

CLI command

API call using cURL

Step 5: Retrieve the secrets

CLI command

Root certificate example:

API call using cURL

Root certificate example:

Additional Discussion

Q: How do I enter my secrets without appearing in history?

Option 1: Use a dash "-"

Option 2: Read the secret from a file

Option 3: Disable all vault command history

Q: How do I save multiple values?

Next steps

18 KiB

Raw Blame History