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Sops

Available in v0.11.0+.

Storing encrypted secrets next to your configuration (within a Git repo or other artifacts) is one way to manage secret lifecycle. kapp-controller integrates with Mozilla’s SOPS to decrypt secret material in fetched configuration.

Prepare your keys

Sops shipped with kapp-controller includes support for encryption via both GPG and age. Note that the Sops project recommends Age.

using GPG 

$ gpg --gen-key
...

$ gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG
/root/.gnupg/secring.gpg
------------------------
sec   4096R/B464DFD255C6B9F8 2020-10-03
uid                          test test (test) <test@test.com>
ssb   4096R/FEE37B8E2098EDFC 2020-10-03

(Note: B464DFD255C6B9F8 is the ID to be used later)

using Age

You may find this screencast helpful.

$ age-keygen -o key.txt
Public key: age12345...

$ chmod 600 key.txt

(Note: the public key age12345... will be used later)

Encrypt contents

kapp-controller expects that encrypted files have .sops.yml extension (or .sops.yml).

You can start by creating an unencrypted yaml:

# Unencrypted file
$ cat secret.yml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: my-sec
data:
  password: my-password

Then encrypt file with your public key from the previous step, to be later decrypted by kapp-controller.

using GPG 

$ sops --encrypt --pgp B464DFD255C6B9F8 secret.yml > secret.sops.yml

# Delete unencrypted file
$ rm secret.yml

using Age 

$ SOPS_AGE_KEY_FILE=./key.txt  sops --encrypt --age age12345... secret.yml > secret.sops.yml

Import private key into Kubernetes

Make a secret that includes the private key and import it into your cluster. It will be referenced by App CR.

using GPG

Extract PGP private key from your GPG installation:

$ gpg --armor --export-secret-keys B464DFD255C6B9F8 > my.pk

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: pgp-key
  namespace: default
stringData:
  # value of this is contents of my.pk
  my.pk: |
    -----BEGIN PGP PRIVATE KEY BLOCK-----
    Version: GnuPG v1
    ...

using Age

Cat the contents of your local key.txt to the body of a stringData block also named key.txt:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: age-key
stringData:
  key.txt: |
    # created: <timestamp>
    # public key: age12345...
    AGE-SECRET-KEY-HUNTER2ORSOMETHINGWHENEVERYOUTYPEYOURPASSWORDIJUSTSEEHUNTER2

Decrypt in App CR

Configure App CR to decrypt contents. Assuming, in this example, your git repo contains secret.sops.yml, it would be decrypted into secret.yml file.

using GPG 

apiVersion: kappctrl.k14s.io/v1alpha1
kind: App
metadata:
  name: config-with-sops
  namespace: default
spec:
  serviceAccountName: default-ns
  fetch:
  - git:
      ...
  template:
  - sops:
      pgp:
        privateKeysSecretRef:
          name: pgp-key
  - ytt: {}
  deploy:
  - kapp: {}

using Age

Nearly identical to the example above, but with a sops.age key:

spec:
  template:
  - sops:
      age:
        privateKeysSecretRef:
          name: age-key
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