Setup your secrets in AWS

In this setup we integrate the secrets-exercise online with AWS EKS and let Pods consume secrets from the AWS Parameter Store and AWS Secrets Manager. We use managed node groups so as we don't want the hassle of managing the EC2 instances ourselves, and Fargate doesn't suit our needs since we use a StatefulSet. If you want to know more about integrating secrets with EKS, check EKS and SSM Parameter Store and EKS and Secrets Manager. Please make sure that the account in which you run this exercise has either CloudTrail enabled, or is not linked to your current organization and/or DTAP environment.

Pre-requisites

Have the following tools installed:

• AWS CLI - Installation
• EKS CTL - Installation
• Tfenv (Optional) - Installation
• Terraform CLI - Installation
• Wget - Installation
• Helm Installation
• Kubectl Installation
• jq Installation

Make sure you have an active account at AWS for which you have configured the credentials on the system where you will execute the steps below. In this example we stored the credentials under an aws profile as awsuser.

Please note that this setup relies on bash scripts that have been tested in MacOS and Linux. We have no intention of supporting vanilla Windows at the moment.

Multi-user setup: shared state

If you want to host a multi-user setup, you will probably want to share the state file so that everyone can try related challenges. We have provided a starter to easily do so using a Terraform S3 backend.

First, create an s3 bucket (optionally add -var="region=YOUR_DESIRED_REGION" to the apply to use a region other than the default eu-west-1):

cd shared-state
terraform init
terraform apply

The bucket name should be in the output. Please use that to configure the Terraform backend in main.tf.

Installation

The terraform code is loosely based on this EKS managed Node Group TF example.

Note: Applying the Terraform means you are creating cloud infrastructure which actually costs you money. The authors are not responsible for any cost coming from following the instructions below.

Note-II: The cluster you create has its access bound to the public IP of the creator. In other words: the cluster you create with this code has its access bound to your public IP-address if you apply it locally.

1. export your AWS credentials (export AWS_PROFILE=awsuser)
2. check whether you have the right profile by doing aws sts get-caller-identity and make sure you have enough rights with the caller its identity and that the actual accountnumber displayed is the account designated for you to apply this TF to.
3. Do terraform init (if required, use tfenv to select TF 0.13.1 or higher )
4. Do terraform plan
5. Do terraform apply. Note: the apply will take 10 to 20 minutes depending on the speed of the AWS backplane.
6. When creation is done, do aws eks update-kubeconfig --region eu-west-1 --name wrongsecrets-exercise-cluster --kubeconfig ~/.kube/wrongsecrets
7. Do export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/wrongsecrets
8. Run ./k8s-vault-aws-start.sh

Your EKS cluster should be visible in EU-West-1 by default. Want a different region? You can modify terraform.tfvars or input it directly using the region variable in plan/apply.

Are you done playing? Please run terraform destroy twice to clean up.

Test it

Run AWS_PROFILE=<your_profile> k8s-vault-aws-start.sh and connect to http://localhost:8080 when it's ready to accept connections (you'll read the line Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:8080 -> 8080 in your console). Now challenge 9 and 10 should be available as well.

Resume it

When you stopped the k8s-vault-aws-start.sh script and want to resume the port forward run: k8s-vault-aws-resume.sh. This is because if you run the start script again it will replace the secret in the vault and not update the secret-challenge application with the new secret.

Clean it up

When you're done:

1. Kill the port forward.
2. Run terraform destroy to clean up the infrastructure.
   1. If you've deployed the shared-state s3 bucket, also cd shared-state and terraform destroy there.
3. Run unset KUBECONFIG to unset the KUBECONFIG env var.
4. Run rm ~/.kube/wrongsecrets to remove the kubeconfig file.
5. Run rm terraform.tfstate* to remove local state files.

A few things to consider

1. Does your worker node now have access as well?
2. Can you easily obtain the instance profile of the Node?
3. Can you get the secrets in the SSM Parameter Store and Secrets Manager easily? Which paths do you see?
4. Which of the 2 (SSM Parameter Store and Secrets Manager) works cross-account?
5. If you have applied the secrets to the cluster, you should see at the configuration details of the cluster that Secrets encryption is "Disabled", what does that mean?

When you want to share your environment with others (experimental)

We added additional scripts for adding an ALB and ingress so that you can use your cloudsetup with multiple people. Do the following:

1. Follow the installation section first.
2. Run k8s-aws-alb-script.sh and the script will return the url at which you can reach the application.
3. When you are done, before you do cleanup, first run k8s-aws-alb-script-cleanup.sh.

Note that you might have to do some manual cleanups after that.

Terraform documentation

The documentation below is auto-generated to give insight on what's created via Terraform.

Requirements

Name	Version
terraform	~> 1.1
aws	~> 5.0.1
http	~> 3.3.0
random	~> 3.5.1

Providers

Name	Version
aws	5.0.1
http	3.3.0
random	3.5.1

Modules

Name	Source	Version
ebs_csi_irsa_role	terraform-aws-modules/iam/aws//modules/iam-role-for-service-accounts-eks	~> 5.5
eks	terraform-aws-modules/eks/aws	19.15.2
vpc	terraform-aws-modules/vpc/aws	~> 5.0.0

Resources

Name	Type
aws_iam_policy.secret_deny	resource
aws_iam_policy.secret_manager	resource
aws_iam_role.irsa_role	resource
aws_iam_role.user_role	resource
aws_iam_role_policy_attachment.irsa_role_attachment	resource
aws_iam_role_policy_attachment.user_role_attachment	resource
aws_secretsmanager_secret.secret	resource
aws_secretsmanager_secret.secret_2	resource
aws_secretsmanager_secret_policy.policy	resource
aws_secretsmanager_secret_policy.policy_2	resource
aws_secretsmanager_secret_version.secret	resource
aws_ssm_parameter.secret	resource
random_password.password	resource
random_password.password2	resource
aws_availability_zones.available	data source
aws_caller_identity.current	data source
aws_iam_policy_document.assume_role_with_oidc	data source
aws_iam_policy_document.secret_manager	data source
aws_iam_policy_document.user_assume_role	data source
aws_iam_policy_document.user_policy	data source
http_http.ip	data source

Inputs

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
cluster_name	The EKS cluster name	string	"wrongsecrets-exercise-cluster"	no
cluster_version	The EKS cluster version to use	string	"1.25"	no
region	The AWS region to use	string	"eu-west-1"	no

Outputs

Name	Description
cluster_endpoint	Endpoint for EKS control plane.
cluster_id	The id of the cluster
cluster_security_group_id	Security group ids attached to the cluster control plane.
irsa_role	The role ARN used in the IRSA setup
secrets_manager_secret_name	The name of the secrets manager secret