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layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
guides	Seal Wrap / FIPS 140-2 - Guides	guides-operations-seal-wrap	In this guide,

Seal Wrap / FIPS 140-2

~> Enterprise Only: Vault's HSM auto-unseal and Seal Wrap features are a part of Vault Enterprise.

Vault Enterprise integrates with HSM platforms to opt-in automatic unsealing. HSM integration provides three pieces of special functionality:

Master Key Wrapping: Vault protects its master key by transiting it through the HSM for encryption rather than splitting into key shares
Automatic Unsealing: Vault stores its encrypted master key in storage, allowing for automatic unsealing
Seal Wrapping to provide FIPS KeyStorage-conforming functionality for Critical Security Parameters

In some large organizations, there is a fair amount of complexity in designating key officers, who might be available to unseal Vault installations as the most common pattern is to deploy Vault immutably. As such automating unseal using an HSM provides a simplified yet secure way of unsealing Vault nodes as they get deployed.

Vault pulls its encrypted master key from storage and transit it through the HSM for decryption via PKCS #11 API. Once the master key is decrypted, Vault uses the master key to decrypt the encryption key to resume with Vault operations.

Reference Material

Estimated Time to Complete

10 minutes

Challenge

The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 is a U.S. Government computer security standard used to accredit cryptography modules. If your product or service does not follow FIPS' security requirements, it may complicate your ability to operate with U.S. Government data.

Aside from doing business with U.S. government, your organization may care about FIPS which approves various cryptographic ciphers for hashing, signature, key exchange, and encryption for security.

Solution

Integrate Vault with FIPS 140-2 certified HSM and enable the Seal Wrap feature to protect your data.

Vault encrypts secrets using 256-bit AES in GCM mode with a randomly generated nonce prior to writing them to its persistent storage. By enabling seal wrap, Vault wraps your secrets with an extra layer of encryption leveraging the HSM encryption and decryption.

Benefits of the Seal Wrap:

Conformance with FIPS 140-2 directives on Key Storage and Key Transport as certified by Leidos
Supports FIPS level of security equal to HSM
- For example, if you use Level 3 hardware encryption on an HSM, Vault will be using FIPS 140-2 Level 3 cryptography
Allows Vault to be deployed in high security GRC environments (e.g. PCI-DSS, HIPAA) where FIPS guidelines important for external audits
Pathway for Vault's use in managing Department of Defense's (DOD) or North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military secrets

Prerequisites

This intermediate operations guide assumes that you have:

A supported HSM cluster to be integrated with Vault
Vault Enterprise Premium

Steps

This guide walks you through the following steps:

Configure HSM Auto-unseal
Enable Seal Wrap
Test the Seal Wrap Feature

Step 1: Configure HSM Auto-unseal

When a Vault server is started, it normally starts in a sealed state where a quorum of existing unseal keys is required to unseal it. By integrating Vault with HSM, your Vault server can be automatically unsealed by the trusted HSM key provider.

Task 1: Write a Vault configuration file

To integrate your Vault Enterprise server with an HSM cluster, the configuration file must define the PKCS11 seal stanza providing necessary connection information.

Example: config-hsm.hcl

# Provide your AWS CloudHSM cluster connection information
seal "pkcs11" {
  lib = "/opt/cloudhsm/lib/libcloudhsm_pkcs11.so"
  slot = "1"
  pin = "vault:Password1"
  key_label = "hsm_demo"
  hmac_key_label = "hsm_hmac_demo"
  generate_key = "true"
}

# Configure the storage backend for Vault
storage "file" {
  path = "/tmp/vault"
}

# Addresses and ports on which Vault will respond to requests
listener "tcp" {
  address     = "127.0.0.1:8200"
  tls_disable = 1
}

ui = true

NOTE: For the purpose of this guide, the storage backend is set to the local file system (/tmp/vault) to make the verification step easy.

The example configuration defines the following in its seal stanza:

lib is set to the path to the PKCS #11 library on the virtual machine where Vault Enterprise is installed
slot should be set to the slot number to use
pin is the PKCS #11 PIN for login
key_label defines the label of the key you want to use
hmac_key_label defines the label of the key you want to use for HMACing. (NOTE: HMAC is optional and only used for mechanisms that do not support authenticated data.)
generate_key is set to true. If no existing key with the label specified by key_label can be found at Vault initialization time, Vault generates a key

~> IMPORTANT: Having Vault generate its own key is the easiest way to get up and running, but for security, Vault marks the key as non-exportable. If your HSM key backup strategy requires the key to be exportable, you should generate the key yourself. Refer to the key generation attributes.

Task 2: Initialize your Vault Enterprise server

Start the Vault server with your Vault configuration file. For example, if your configuration file is located at /home/ec2-user/config-hsm.hcl, the command would look like:

$ vault server -config=/home/ec2-user/config-hsm.hcl

  SDK Version: 2.03
==> Vault server configuration:

   HSM PKCS#11 Version: 2.40
           HSM Library: Cavium PKCS#11 Interface
   HSM Library Version: 1.0
   HSM Manufacturer ID: Cavium Networks
              HSM Type: pkcs11
                   Cgo: enabled
            Listener 1: tcp (addr: "127.0.0.1:8200", cluster address: "127.0.0.1:8201", tls: "disabled")
             Log Level: info
                 Mlock: supported: true, enabled: false
               Storage: file
               Version: Vault v0.10.1+ent.hsm
           Version Sha: 0e628142d6b6e5cabfdb9680a6d669d38f15574f

==> Vault server started! Log data will stream in below:

In another terminal, set the VAULT_ADDR environment variable, and [initialize] (/intro/getting-started/deploy.html#initializing-the-vault) your Vault server.

Example:

# Set the VAULT_ADDR environment variable
$ export VAULT_ADDR="http://127.0.0.1:8200"

# Initialize Vault
$ vault operator init

Recovery Key 1: 2bU2wOfmyMqYcsEYo4Mo9q4s/KAODgHHjcmZmFOo+XY=
Initial Root Token: 8d726c6b-98ba-893f-23d5-be3d2fec480e

Success! Vault is initialized

Recovery key initialized with 1 key shares and a key threshold of 1. Please
securely distribute the key shares printed above.

There is only a single master key created which is encrypted by the HSM using PKCS #11, and then placed in the storage. When Vault needs to be unsealed, it grabs the HSM encrypted master key from the storage, round trips it through the HSM to decrypt the master key.

~> NOTE: When Vault is initialized while using an HSM, rather than unseal keys being returned to the operator, recovery keys are returned. These are generated from an internal recovery key that is split via Shamir's Secret Sharing, similar to Vault's treatment of unseal keys when running without an HSM. Some Vault operations such as generation of a root token require these recovery keys.

$ vault login 8d726c6b-98ba-893f-23d5-be3d2fec480e

Task 3: Verification

Stop and restart the Vault server and then verify its status:

$ vault status

Key                      Value
---                      -----
Recovery Seal Type       shamir
Sealed                   false
Total Recovery Shares    1
Threshold                1
Version                  0.10.1+ent.hsm
Cluster Name             vault-cluster-80556565
Cluster ID               40316cdd-3d42-ec36-e7b0-6a7a0684568c
HA Enabled               false

The Sealed status is false which means that the Vault was automatically unsealed upon its start. You can proceed with Vault operations.

Step 2: Enable Seal Wrap

-> NOTE: For FIPS 140-2 compliance, seal wrap requires FIPS 140-2 Certified HSM which is supported by Vault Enterprise Premium.

For some values, seal wrapping is always enabled including the recovery key, any stored key shares, the master key, the keyring, and more. When working with the key/value secret engine, you can enable seal wrap to wrap all data.

CLI command

Check the enabled secret engines.

$ vault secrets list -format=json
{
  ...
  "secret/": {
    "type": "kv",
    "description": "key/value secret storage",
    "accessor": "kv_75820543",
    "config": {
      "default_lease_ttl": 0,
      "max_lease_ttl": 0,
      "force_no_cache": false
    },
    "options": {
      "version": "1"
    },
    "local": false,
    "seal_wrap": false
  },
  ...

Notice that the seal_wrap parameter is set to false.

For the purpose of comparing seal wrapped data against unwrapped data, enable additional key/value secret engine at the secret2/ path.

# Pass the '-seal-wrap' flag when you enable the KV workflow
$ vault secrets enable -path=secret2/ -version=1 -seal-wrap kv

The above command enabled key/value version 1 with seal wrap feature enabled.

$ vault secrets list -format=json
{
  ...
  "secret2/": {
    "type": "kv",
    "description": "",
    "accessor": "kv_bdd74241",
    "config": {
      "default_lease_ttl": 0,
      "max_lease_ttl": 0,
      "force_no_cache": false
    },
    "options": {
      "version": "1"
    },
    "local": false,
    "seal_wrap": true
  },
  ...

Notice that the seal_wrap parameter is set to true at secret2/.

API call using cURL

Check the enabled secret engines.

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/mounts | jq
...
  "secret/": {
    "accessor": "kv_f05b8b9c",
    "config": {
      "default_lease_ttl": 0,
      "force_no_cache": false,
      "max_lease_ttl": 0,
      "plugin_name": ""
    },
    "description": "key/value secret storage",
    "local": false,
    "options": {
      "version": "2"
    },
    "seal_wrap": false,
    "type": "kv"
  },
...

Notice that the seal_wrap parameter is set to false.

For the purpose of comparing seal wrapped data against unwrapped data, enable additional key/value secret engine at the secret2/ path.

# Set the seal_wrap parameter to true in the request payload
$ tee payload.json <<EOF
{
  "type": "kv",
  "options": {
    "version": "1"
  },
  "seal_wrap": true
}
EOF

# Enable kv secret engine at secret2/
$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       --request POST \
       --data @payload.json \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/mounts/secret2

The above command enabled key/value version 1 with seal wrap feature enabled.

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/mounts | jq
{
...
  "secret2/": {
    "accessor": "kv_724c81c9",
    "config": {
      "default_lease_ttl": 0,
      "force_no_cache": false,
      "max_lease_ttl": 0,
      "plugin_name": ""
    },
    "description": "",
    "local": false,
    "options": {
      "version": "1"
    },
    "seal_wrap": true,
    "type": "kv"
  },
  ...
}

Notice that the seal_wrap parameter is set to true at secret2/.

Web UI

Open a web browser and launch the Vault UI (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8200/ui) and then login.

For the purpose of comparing seal wrapped data against unwrapped data, enable additional key/value secret engine at the secret2/ path.

Select Enable new engine.

Enter secret2 in the path field
Select Version 1 for KV version
Select the check box for Seal Wrap

Click Enable Engine.

Step 3: Test the Seal Wrap Feature

In this step, you are going to:

Write some test data
View the encrypted secrets

CLI command

Write a secret at secret/unwrapped.

# Write a key named 'password' with its value 'my-long-password'
$ vault kv put secret/unwrapped password="my-long-password"

# Read the path to verify
$ vault kv get secret/unwrapped
====== Data ======
Key         Value
---         -----
password    my-long-password

Write the same secret at secret2/wrapped.

# Write a key named 'password' with its value 'my-long-password'
$ vault kv put secret2/wrapped password="my-long-password"

# Read the path to verify
$ vault kv get secret2/wrapped
====== Data ======
Key         Value
---         -----
password    my-long-password

Using a valid token, you can write and read secrets the same way regardless of the seal wrap.

API call using cURL

Write a secret at secret/unwrapped.

# Create a payload
$ tee payload.json <<EOF
{
  "data": {
    "password": "my-long-password"
  }
}
EOF

# Write secret at 'secret/unwrapped'
$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       --request POST \
       --data @payload.json \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret/unwrapped

# Read the path to verify
$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret/unwrapped | jq
{
   "request_id": "cef0b061-3860-6a3c-8bba-1fdbf7be7bf1",
   "lease_id": "",
   "renewable": false,
   "lease_duration": 2764800,
   "data": {
     "data": {
       "password": "my-long-password"
     }
   },
   "wrap_info": null,
   "warnings": null,
   "auth": null
}

Write the same secret at secret2/wrapped.

# Write the same secret at 'secret2/wrapped'
$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
       --request POST \
       --data @payload.json \
       http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret2/wrapped

# Read the path to verify
$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: ..." \
      http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/secret2/wrapped | jq
{
  "request_id": "cc9ce831-2ca7-7115-a899-ce33767bdc2c",
  "lease_id": "",
  "renewable": false,
  "lease_duration": 2764800,
  "data": {
    "data": {
      "password": "my-long-password"
    }
  },
  "wrap_info": null,
  "warnings": null,
  "auth": null
}

Using a valid token, you can write and read secrets the same way regardless of the seal wrap.

Web UI

Select secret and click Create secret.

Enter the following:

PATH FOR THIS SECTE: unwrapped
key: password
value: my-long-password

Click Save.

Repeat the same step for secret2 to write the same secret at the secret2/wrapped path.

Click Save.

Using a valid token, you can write and read secrets the same way regardless of the seal wrap.

View the encrypted secrets

Remember that the Vault server was configured to use the local file system (/tmp/vault) as its storage backend in this example.

# Configure the storage backend for Vault
storage "file" {
  path = "/tmp/vault"
}

SSH into the machine where the Vault server is running, and check the stored values in the /tmp/vault directory.

$ cd /tmp/vault/logical

Under the /tmp/vault/logical directory, there are two sub-directories. One maps to secret/ and another maps to secret2/ although you cannot tell by the folder names.

View the secret at rest.

# One of the directory maps to secret/unwrapped
$ cd 2da357cd-55f2-7eed-c46e-c477b70bed18

# View its content - password value is encrypted
$ cat _unwrapped
{"Value":"AAAAAQICk547prhuhMiBXLq2lx8ZkMpSB3p+GKHAwuMhKrZGSeqsFevMS6YoqTVlbvpU9B4zWPZ2HA
SeNZ3YMw=="}

# Another directory maps to secret2/wrapped
$ cd ../5bcea44d-28a3-87af-393b-c6d398fe41d8

# View its content - password value is encrypted
$ cat _wrapped
{"Value":"ClBAg9oN7zBBaDBZcsilDAyGkL7soPe7vBA5+ADADuyzo8GuHZHb9UFN2nF1h0OpKEgCIkG3JNHcXt
tZqCi6szcuNBgF3pwhWGwB4FREM3b5CRIQYK7239Q92gRGrcBBeZD6ghogEtSBDmZJBahk7n4lIYF3X4iBqmwZgH
Vo4lzWur7rzncgASofCIIhENEEGghoc21fZGVtbyINaHNtX2htYWNfZGVtb3M="}

Secrets are encrypted regardless; however, the seal-wrapped value is significantly longer despite the fact that both values are the same, my-long-password.

~> When Vault's Seal Wrap feature is used with a FIPS 140-2 certified HSM, Vault will store Critical Security Parameters (CSPs) in a manner that is compliant with KeyStorage and KeyTransit requirements.

Next steps

This guide used the local file system as the storage backend to keep it simple. To learn more about making your Vault cluster highly available, read the Vault HA with Consul guide.

18 KiB Raw Blame History

Seal Wrap / FIPS 140-2

Reference Material

Estimated Time to Complete

Challenge

Solution

Benefits of the Seal Wrap:

Prerequisites

Steps

Step 1: Configure HSM Auto-unseal

Task 1: Write a Vault configuration file

Task 2: Initialize your Vault Enterprise server

Task 3: Verification

Step 2: Enable Seal Wrap

CLI command

API call using cURL

Web UI

Step 3: Test the Seal Wrap Feature

CLI command

API call using cURL

Web UI

View the encrypted secrets

Next steps

18 KiB

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