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CyberArk Conjur

Conjur Provider

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

Prerequisites

Before installing the Conjur provider, you need:

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

Conjur server certificate

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

....
spec:
  provider:
    conjur:
      # Service URL
      url: https://myapi.conjur.org

      # [OPTIONAL] base64 encoded string of certificate
      caBundle: "<base64 encoded cabundle>"

      # [OPTIONAL] caProvider:
      # Instead of caBundle you can also specify a caProvider,
      # which retrieves the cert from a Secret or ConfigMap
      caProvider:
        type: "Secret" # Can be Secret or ConfigMap
        name: "<name of secret or configmap>"
        key: "<key inside secret or configmap>"
        # namespace is required for ClusterSecretStore
        # but not relevant for SecretStore
        namespace: "my-cert-secret-namespace"
  ....

External secret store

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

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

Option 1: External secret store with apiKey authentication

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

Step 1: Define an external secret store

Tip

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

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: SecretStore
metadata:
  name: conjur
spec:
  provider:
    conjur:
      # Service URL
      url: https://myapi.conjur.org
      # [OPTIONAL] base64 encoded string of certificate
      caBundle: OPTIONALxFIELDxxxBase64xCertxString==  
      auth:
        apikey:
          # conjur account
          account: conjur
          userRef: # Get this from K8S secret
            name: conjur-creds
            key: hostid
          apiKeyRef: # Get this from K8S secret
            name: conjur-creds
            key: apikey
Step 2: Create Kubernetes secrets for Conjur credentials

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

Note

For more information about how to create K8s secrets, see 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, 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 Conjur. 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 Conjur account
  • serviceId - The ID of the JWT Authenticator WebService configured in Conjur 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:

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: SecretStore
metadata:
  name: conjur
spec:
  provider:
    conjur:
      # Service URL
      url: https://myapi.conjur.org
      # [OPTIONAL] base64 encoded string of certificate
      caBundle: OPTIONALxFIELDxxxBase64xCertxString==
      auth:
        jwt:
          # conjur account
          account: conjur
          # The authn-jwt service ID
          serviceID: my-jwt-auth-service
          # Service account to retrieve JWT token for
          serviceAccountRef:
            name: my-service-account
            # [OPTIONAL] audiences to include in JWT token
            audiences:
              - https://conjur.company.com

Important

This method is only supported in Kubernetes 1.22 and above as it uses the TokenRequest API to get the JWT token from the referenced service account. Audiences can be defined in the Conjur JWT authenticator.

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

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: SecretStore
metadata:
  name: conjur
spec:
  provider:
    conjur:
      # Service URL
      url: https://myapi.conjur.org
      # [OPTIONAL] base64 encoded string of certificate
      caBundle: OPTIONALxFIELDxxxBase64xCertxString==
      auth:
        jwt:
          # conjur account
          account: conjur
          # The authn-jwt service ID
          serviceID: my-jwt-auth-service
          # Secret containing a valid JWT token
          secretRef:
            name: my-jwt-secret
            key: token

The JWT token must identify your Conjur host, be compatible with your configured Conjur JWT authenticator, and meet all the Conjur 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 Conjur provider secret store, you can fetch secrets from Conjur.

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

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: ExternalSecret
metadata:
  name: conjur
spec:
  refreshInterval: 1h
  secretStoreRef:
    # This name must match the metadata.name in the `SecretStore`
    name: conjur
    kind: SecretStore
  data:
  - secretKey: secret00
    remoteRef:
      key: data/app1/secret00

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

Find by Name and Find by Tag

The Conjur 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 Conjur.

apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
kind: ExternalSecret
metadata:
  name: conjur-find-by-name
spec:
  refreshInterval: 1h
  secretStoreRef:
    # This name must match the metadata.name in the `SecretStore`
    name: conjur
    kind: SecretStore
  target:
    name: k8s-secret-to-be-created
  dataFrom:
    - find:
        # You can use *either* `name` or `tags` to filter the secrets. Here are basic examples of both:
        name:
          # Match all secrets in the app1 namespace (e.g., `app1/secret00`, `app1/secret01`, etc.)
          regexp: "^app1\/.+$"
        tags:
          # Only fetch Conjur secrets with the following annotations
          environment: "prod"
          application: "app1"

If you use these features, we strongly recommend that you limit the permissions of the Conjur host to only the secrets that it needs to access. This is more secure and it reduces the load on both the Conjur 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 Conjur server and verify that your secret exists
  • Review the value of your Kubernetes secret to verify that it contains the same value as the Conjur 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

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.