external-secrets/docs/provider/conjur.md

Conjur Provider

The following sections outline what is needed to get your external-secrets Conjur provider setup.

Pre-requirements

This section contains the list of the pre-requirements before installing the Conjur Provider.

• Running Conjur Server
  • These items will be needed in order to configure the secret-store
    • Conjur endpoint - include the scheme but no trailing '/', ex: https://myapi.example.com
    • Conjur authentication info (hostid, apikey, jwt service id, etc)
    • Conjur must be configured to support your authentication method (apikey is supported by default, jwt requires additional configuration)
    • Certificate for Conjur server is OPTIONAL -- But, when using a self-signed cert when setting up your Conjur server, it is strongly recommended to populate "caBundle" with self-signed cert in the secret-store definition
• Kubernetes cluster
  • External Secrets Operator is installed

Certificate for Conjur server

When using a self-signed cert when setting up your Conjur server, it is strongly recommended to populate "caBundle" with self-signed cert in the secret-store definition. The certificate CA must be referenced on the secret-store definition using either a caBundle or caProvider as below:

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

External Secret Store Definition with ApiKey Authentication

This method uses a combination of the Conjur hostid and apikey to authenticate to Conjur. This method is the simplest to setup and use as your Conjur instance requires no special setup.

Create External Secret Store Definition

Recommend to save as filename: conjur-secret-store.yaml

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

Create Kubernetes Secrets

In order for the ESO Conjur provider to connect to the Conjur server using the apikey creds, these creds should be stored as k8s secrets. Please refer to https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/#creating-a-secret for various methods to create secrets. Here is one way to do it using kubectl

NOTE: "conjur-creds" is the "name" used in "userRef" and "apikeyRef" in the conjur-secret-store definition

# 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

External Secret Store with JWT Authentication

This method uses JWT tokens to authenticate with Conjur. The following methods for retrieving the JWT token for authentication are supported:

• JWT token from a referenced Kubernetes Service Account
• JWT token stored in a Kubernetes secret

Create External Secret Store Definition

When using 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 will be used to authenticate the JWT token

You can then choose to either retrieve the JWT token using a Service Account reference or from a Kubernetes Secret.

To use 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' %}

This 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 set as required by the Conjur JWT authenticator.

Alternatively, a secret containing a valid JWT token can be referenced as follows:

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

This secret must contain a JWT token that identifies your Conjur host. The secret must contain a JWT token consumable by a configured Conjur JWT authenticator and must satisfy all Conjur JWT guidelines. This can be a JWT created by an external JWT issuer or the Kubernetes api server itself. Such a with Kubernetes Service Account token can be created using the below command:

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

Save the SecretStore definition as filename conjur-secret-store.yaml as referenced in later steps.

Create External Secret Definition

Important note: Creds must live in the same namespace as a SecretStore - the secret store may only reference secrets from the same namespace. When using a ClusterSecretStore this limitation is lifted and the creds can live in any namespace.

Recommend to save as filename: conjur-external-secret.yaml

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

Create the External Secrets Store

# WARNING: this will create the store configuration in the "external-secrets" namespace, adjust this to your own situation
#
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

Create the External Secret

# WARNING: this will create the external-secret configuration in the "external-secrets" namespace, adjust this to your own situation
#
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

Getting the K8S Secret

• Login to your Conjur server and verify that your secret exists
• Review the value of your Kubernetes secret to see that it contains the same value from Conjur

# 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

Support

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