Developed and used in all environments in BaseCRM.
We store secrets and values in helm_vars dir structure just like in this repository example dir. All this data versioned in GIT.
Working in teams on multiple projects/regions/envs and multiple secrets files at once.
We have Makefile in our Helm charts repo to simplify install helm-secrets plugin with helm and other stuff we use. Same Makefile used to rebuild all helm charts with dependencies and some other everyday helpers.
Encrypting, Decrypting, Editing secrets on local clones, making #PR's and storing this in our helm charts repo encrypted with PGP, AWS KMS and GCP KMS.
Deploying using helm-wrapper from local or from CI with same charts and secrets/values from GIT repository.
A first internal version of the plugin used pure PGP and the whole secret file was encrypted as one. A current version of the plugin using Golang sops as backend which could be integrated in future into Helm itself, but currently, it is only shell wrapper.
What kind of problems this plugin solves:
- Simple replaceable layer integrated with helm command for encrypting, decrypting, view secrets files stored in any place. Currently using SOPS as backend.
- Support for YAML/JSON structures encryption - Helm YAML secrets files
- Encryption per value where visual Diff should work even on encrypted files
- On the fly decryption for git diff
- On the fly decryption and cleanup for helm install/upgrade with this plugin helm bash command wrapper
- Multiple key management solutions like PGP, AWS KMS and GCP KMS at same time
- Simple adding/removing keys
- With AWS KMS permissions management for keys
- Secrets files directory tree separation with recursive .sops.yaml files search
- Extracting sub-elements from encrypted file structure
- Encrypt only part of a file if needed. Example encrypted file
helm-wrapper - It is not a part of Helm project itself. It is the just simple wrapper in the shell that runs helm bellow but wrapping secrets decryption and cleaning on-the-fly, before and after Helm run. Created from install-binary.sh in helm-secrets plugin install process as hook action making the symlink to wrapper.sh. This should be used as default command to operate with Helm client with helm-secrets installed.
test.sh - Test script to check if all parts of the plugin work. Using example dir with vars structure and PGP keys to make real tests on real data with real encryption/decryption.
install-binary.sh - Script used as the hook to install helm-wrapper, download and install sops and install git diff configuration for helm-secret files.
secrets.sh - Main helm-secrets plugin code for all helm-secrets plugin actions available in helm secrets help after plugin install
Just install plugin using helm plugin install https://github.com/futuresimple/helm-secrets and sops will be installed using hook when helm > 2.3.x
You can always install manually for MacOS:
brew install sops
For Linux RPM or DEB, sops is available here: Dist Packages
Git config part is installed with a plugin but to be fully functional need .gitattributes file inside the root directory of charts repo with content
*.yaml diff=sopsdiffer
More info on sops page
helm plugin install https://github.com/futuresimple/helm-secrets
Get a release tarball from the releases page.
Unpack the tarball in your helm plugins directory ($(helm home)/plugins).
For example:
curl -L $TARBALL_URL | tar -C $(helm home)/plugins -xzv
By default helm-wrapper is not configured to encrypt/decrypt secrets.yaml in charts templates. They are templates and values from specific secrets/value files should e used in this templates as reference from helm itself. Set you own options as ENV variables if you like overwrite default kms enabled and decrypt charts disabled.
DECRYPT_CHARTS=false helm-wrapper ....
$ helm secrets help
enc Encrypt chart secrets file
dec Decrypt chart secrets file
dec-deps Decrypt chart's dependencies' secrets files
view Print chart secrets decrypted
edit Edit chart secrets and encrypt at the end
Any of this command have its own help
Note: You need to run gpg --import example/pgp/project{x,y}.asc in order to successfully decrypt secrets included in the examples
$ helm secrets dec example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
Decrypting example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
As the output you will get example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml.dec with decrypted secrets inside
secret_sandbox_projectx: secret_foo_123
Decrypt
$ helm secrets dec example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
Decrypting example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
Now encrypt
$ helm secrets enc example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
Encrypting example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
Encrypted example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
With this option you will get decrypted file on stdout
$ helm secrets view example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
secret_sandbox_projectx: secret_foo_123
Currently will open vim with decrypted data from secret and on save will encrypt file with new edited data. If you quit without any modification no changes will be saved.
$ helm secrets edit example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml
There is new feature in SOPS master that allows using $EDITOR to spcify editor used by sops but not released yet.
Now clean dec file after manual decrypt
$ helm secrets clean example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/
example/helm_vars/projectX/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/secrets.yaml.dec
If you use git there is commit hook that prevents commiting decrypted files and you can add all *.dec files in you charts project .gitignore file.
- Values/Secrets data are not a part of the chart. You need to manage your values, public charts contains mostly defaults without secrets - data vs code
- To use the helm-secrets plugin you should build your
.sops.yamlrules to make everything automatic - Use helm secrets <enc|dec|view|edit> to everyday work with you secret yaml files
- Use version control systems like GIT to work in teams and get history of versions
- Everyday search keys is simple even with encrypted files or decrypt on-the-fly with git diff config included
- With example helm_vars you can manage multiple world locations with multiple projects that contain multiple environments
- With helm-wrapper you can easily run helm install/upgrade/rollback with secrets files included as
-foption from you helm_vars values dir tree.
We use vars for Helm Charts from separate directory tree with the structure like this:
helm_vars/
├── .sops.yaml
├── projectX
| ├── .sops.yaml
│ ├── production
│ │ └── us-east-1
│ │ └── java-app
│ │ └── hello-world
│ │ ├── secrets.yaml
│ │ └── values.yaml
│ ├── sandbox
│ │ └── us-east-1
│ │ └── java-app
│ │ └── hello-world
│ │ ├── secrets.yaml
│ │ └── values.yaml
| ├── secrets.yaml
│ └── values.yaml
├── projectY
| ├── .sops.yaml
│ ├── production
│ │ └── us-east-1
│ │ └── java-app
│ │ └── hello-world
│ │ ├── secrets.yaml
│ │ └── values.yaml
│ ├── sandbox
│ │ └── us-east-1
│ │ └── java-app
│ │ └── hello-world
│ │ ├── secrets.yaml
│ │ └── values.yaml
| ├── secrets.yaml
│ └── values.yaml
├── secrets.yaml
└── values.yaml
As you can see we can run different PGP or KMS keys per project, globally or per any tree level. Thanks to this we can isolate tree on different CI/CD instances using same GIT repository. As we use simple -f option when running helm-wrapper we can just use encrypted secrets.yaml and all these secrets will be decrypted and cleaned on the fly before and after helm run.
.sops.yaml file example
---
creation_rules:
# Encrypt with AWS KMS
- kms: 'arn:aws:kms:us-east-1:222222222222:key/111b1c11-1c11-1fd1-aa11-a1c1a1sa1dsl1+arn:aws:iam::222222222222:role/helm_secrets'
# Encrypt using GCP KMS
- gcp_kms: projects/mygcproject/locations/global/keyRings/mykeyring/cryptoKeys/thekey
# As failover encrypt with PGP
pgp: '000111122223333444AAAADDDDFFFFGGGG000999'
# For more help look at https://github.com/mozilla/sops
Multiple KMS and PGP are allowed.
Everything is described in SOPS docs - links in this project description.
Running helm to install/upgrade chart with our secret files is simple with helm-wrapper which will decrypt on-the-fly and use decrypted secret files specified by us. Real example of helm-wrapper usage with simple java helloworld application.
AWS_PROFILE=sandbox helm-wrapper upgrade \
helloworld \
stable/java-app \
--install \
--timeout 600 \
--wait \
--kube-context=sandbox \
--namespace=projectx \
--set global.app_version=bff8fc4 \
-f helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml \
-f helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/values.yaml \
-f helm_vars/secrets.yaml \
-f helm_vars/values.yaml
>>>>>> Decrypt
Decrypting helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml
>>>>>> Decrypt
Decrypting helm_vars/secrets.yaml
Release "helloworld" has been upgraded. Happy Helming!
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri May 5 13:27:01 2017
NAMESPACE: projectx
STATUS: DEPLOYED
RESOURCES:
==> extensions/v1beta1/Deployment
NAME DESIRED CURRENT UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
helloworld 3 3 3 2 1h
==> v1/Secret
NAME TYPE DATA AGE
helloworld Opaque 10 1h
==> v1/ConfigMap
NAME DATA AGE
helloworld 2 1h
==> v1/Service
NAME CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
helloworld 100.65.221.245 <none> 8080/TCP 1h
NOTES:
Deploy success helloworld-bff8fc4 in namespace projectx
>>>>>> Cleanup
helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml.dec
helm_vars/secrets.yaml.dec
You can see that we use global secret file and specific for this app in this project/environment/region secret. We use some plain value files next to secrets. We use values from secrets in some secrets template in helloworld application chart template and some values are used in the configmap template in the same chart. Some values are added as env variables in deployment manifest templates in the chart. As you can see we can use secrets and values in helm in many ways. Everything depends on use case.
Even when helm failed then decrypted files are cleaned
AWS_PROFILE=sandbox helm-wrapper upgrade \
helloworld \
stable/java-app \
--install \
--timeout 600 \
--wait \
--kube-context=wrongcontext \
--namespace=projectx \
--set global.app_version=bff8fc4 \
-f helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml \
-f helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/values.yaml \
-f helm_vars/secrets.yaml \
-f helm_vars/values.yaml
>>>>>> Decrypt
Decrypting helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml
>>>>>> Decrypt
Decrypting helm_vars/secrets.yaml
Error: could not get kubernetes config for context 'wrongcontext': context "wrongcontext" does not exist
>>>>>> Cleanup
helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml.dec
helm_vars/secrets.yaml.dec
We just need to create Kubenetes secrets template in chart templates dir.
For example in your charts repo you have stable/helloworld/ inside this chart you should have stable/helloworld/templates/ dir and then creating stable/helloworld/templates/secrets.yaml file with content as specified bellow.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: helloworld
labels:
app: helloworld
chart: "{{ .Chart.Name }}-{{ .Chart.Version }}"
release: "{{ .Release.Name }}"
heritage: "{{ .Release.Service }}"
type: Opaque
data:
my_secret_key: {{ .Values.secret_sandbox_helloworld | b64enc | quote }}
In this example you will have Kubernetes secret created with name helloworld and data inside this secret will be filled from values defined in -f helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml. Then we use plain .Values pointing to key secret_sandbox_helloworld in decrypted secret file and value from this decrypted helm_vars/projectx/sandbox/us-east-1/java-app/helloworld/secrets.yaml will be available as my_secret_key in Kubernetes.
You can now call it in your deployment (or any other supporting secretKeyRef) manifest in env section like this:
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
...
...
containers:
...
...
env:
- name: my_new_secret_key
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
name: helloworld
key: my_secret_key
If you like to secure situation when decrypted file is committed by mistake to git you can add your secrets.yaml.dec files to you charts project .gitignore
As the second level of securing this situation is to add for example .sopscommithook file inside your charts repository local commit hook.
This will prevent committing decrypted files without sops metadata.
.sopscommithook content example:
#!/bin/sh
for FILE in $(git diff-index HEAD --name-only | grep <your vars dir> | grep "secrets.y"); do
if [ -f "$FILE" ] && ! grep -C10000 "sops:" $FILE | grep -q "version:"; then
echo "!!!!! $FILE" 'File is not encrypted !!!!!'
echo "Run: helm secrets enc <file path>"
exit 1
fi
done
exit