Article

Integrate OpenShift Service Mesh with cert-manager and Vault

August 24, 2023
Kubernetes Service Mesh
Shankar Govindarajan
Senior Architect
2021 Service Mesh Topic Image

Provisioning strong identities for every workload using X.509 certificates and establishing mutual TLS (mTLS) as a full stack solution for transport security without requiring any code changes is one of the many features offered out of the box by Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh (based on the upstream Istio project).

This article explores configuring HashiCorp Vault as the PKI engine (or certificate back-end) for signing OpenShift Service Mesh workloads using cert-manager and istio-csr.

Default and pluggable CA scenario

Until OpenShift Service Mesh 2.3, we had to rely on workload certificates that were either created by the auto-generated self-signed root cert and key or by a custom root / intermediate Certificate Authority (CA) and key that is exposed to the underlying control plane infrastructure, as documented here.

Figure 1 depicts the following scenario, where:

  • istiod, while it bootstraps its CA capabilities, looks for a secret called cacerts that you create manually with the custom root/intermediate CA and key. If it does not find one, it generates a self-signed root cert and key and creates a secret called istio-ca-secret that is mounted within the pod.
  • istiod exposes a gRPC endpoint that accepts the incoming certificate signing request (CSR) from the workloads and hands off the signing request to the CA capability to generate certs for the workload.
  • istiod creates a ConfigMap called istio-ca-root-cert with root / intermediate CA in all the members' namespaces to be mounted inside the workload pods for handling mTLS.
Depiction of Default and Pluggable CA Scenario
Figure 1: Depiction of Default and Pluggable CA Scenario
Figure 1: The default pluggable CA scenario, in which the certs are either signed by auto-generated self signed CAs or by the custom CA and key that gets exposed to the platform.

External CA using cert-manager

With the release of OpenShift Service Mesh 2.4 and the supported integration with the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift, we can improve this setup and make it more secure by integrating with an external PKI engine like HashiCorp Vault. Figure 2 illustrates this setup.

Diagram shows use of external PKI as CA.
Figure 2: Using external PKI as CA with cert-manager scenario where the certs are signed by the CA hosted securely in an external PKI engine

 

Key takeaways:

  • istio-csr, while bootstrapping, can be configured to auto-discover the root CA (Not Recommended) or configured to look for a manually created secret that contains the root CA—istio-root-ca, in this case—that will in turn create a secret, istiod-tls, containing the serving certs for istiod. (Note: According to the documentation, it is recommended to manually create a secret containing the root CA and configure the same to avoid signer hijacking attacks.)
  • istio-csr replaces istiod as the CA and assumes the responsibility of verifying the workload while receiving the incoming CSR to sign and generate the certificate.
  • Upon receiving the CSR, the istio-csr component initiates a CertificateRequest flow with the cert-manager.
  • cert-manager watches for the created CertificateRequest and converts it to a CSR before requesting the Issuer (Vault PKI Engine) for a signed certificate.
  • The issuer, in turn, generates a signed certificate that is then returned to the proxy to facilitate mTLS.

We will now look at how to implement the preceding setup. You can find the playbooks for this tutorial in this repository.

Prerequisites

In order to follow along with this activity, the following prerequisites are required:

  • Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh and its related operators
  • cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift
  • HashiCorp Vault

The name of the project/namespace for the OpenShift Service Mesh control plane is istio-system.

Configure the Vault PKI infra

Script ref: https://gitlab.com/cloudopslabs/cert-mgr-integ/-/blob/main/ansible/scripts/create-certs.sh?ref_type=heads

We will create a two-layered PKI consisting of a root CA and an intermediate CA. The OpenShift Service Mesh cert-manager infrastructure will then use the intermediate CA to sign the certificates for the workload.

  1. Start and log in to the Vault server:

    $ vault server -dev -dev-root-token-id root

    Note: Starting the Vault server with the root token is for demo purposes and should not be used in production.

    With the following two environment variables, the commands to interact with the server in the subsequent steps will get executed successfully:

    $ export VAULT_ADDR=<Vault Server URL>
$ export VAULT_TOKEN=<Vault Token>

  2. Generate the root CA:

    1. Enable the PKI engine and set the default path pki. The path can be anything; the command basically creates a PKI engine under the path pki.

      $ vault secrets enable pki

    2. Tune the CA max time / lease / expiry time to 10 years (87,600 hours):

      $ vault secrets tune -max-lease-ttl=87600h pki

    3. Configure the root CA: This will generate a self-signed CA cert and private key. Note that if the path ends with exported, the response will return the private key. If it ends with internal, the private key will not be returned and cannot be retrieved later. We use internal and save the private key to have a copy.

      $ vault write -field=certificate pki/root/generate/internal \
   max_path_length=1 \
   common_name= "RH Custom Root CA" \
   ou= "RH-FSI" \
   organization= "Red Hat Consulting" \
   country= "US" \
   ttl=87600h \
   issuer_name="rh-custom-root-ca" \
   key_bits=4096 > RH_Custom_CA.crt

      max_path_length is set to 1 because we only have a 2-layer PKI. The last layer in our PKI setup, the Intermediates CA, will be 0.

      key_bits: This is the level of encryption. The Vault default for PKI is 2048, but we will change this to be higher: 4096.

  3. Generate the intermediate CA:

    1. Similar to generating the root CA, enable the PKI engine for intermediate certs under the path pki_int_ca:

      $ vault secrets enable -path=pki_int_ca pki

    2. Tune the expiry time to 5 years:

      $ vault secrets tune -max-lease-ttl=43800h pki_int_ca

    3. max_path_length is equal to 0. This signals that this is the last level in our PKI and no more intermediates will follow, meaning that the certificates this CA generates will be for end-entity (EE) users.

      $ vault write -format=json pki_int_ca/intermediate/generate/internal \
  require_cn=false \
  max_path_length=0 \
  common_name="RH Custom Intermediate CA" \
  ou="RH-FSI" \
  organization="Red Hat Consulting" \
  country="US" \
  issuer_name="rh-custom-intermediate-ca" \
  key_bits=4096 | jq -r '.data.csr' > RH_Custom_Intermediate_CA.csr

    4. Use the CSR above to create a new intermediate CA cert. Here, we have configured the same values for common_name, ou, organization, country, and key_bits, but it is not necessary to do so; we can also replace all of those values with use_csr_values=true.

      $ vault write -format=json pki/root/sign-intermediate \
  max_path_length=0 \
  common_name= "RH Custom Intermediate CA" \
  ou= "RH-FSI" \
  organization= "Red Hat Consulting" \
  country= "US" \
  ttl=43800h \
  key_bits=4096 \
  format=pem_bundle \
  issuer_ref="rh-custom-root-ca" \
  csr=@RH_Custom_Intermediate_CA.csr | jq -r '.data.certificate' > RH_Custom_Intermediate_CA.pem

      We pass the CSR file we just created locally using the @ character and then provide the file format.

    5. Once the CSR is signed and the root CA returns a certificate, you can import it back into Vault.

      $ vault write pki_int_ca/intermediate/set-signed certificate=@RH_Custom_Intermediate_CA.pem

  4. Create the Vault role for issuing certs.

    $ vault write pki_int_ca/roles/rh-custom-issuer  \
  allow_any_name=true \
  allow_uri_sans=true \
  allow_ip_sans=true \
  ou= "RH-SPPRT" \
  organization= "Red Hat Consulting" \
  country= "US" \
  use_csr_common_name=true \
  ttl= "4380h" \
  max_ttl= "4380h" \
  enforce_hostnames=false \
  allow_bare_domains=true \
  require_cn=false \
  allowed_uri_sans= "istio-system.svc, opentlc.com, cluster.local, spiffe://*" \
  allow_subdomains=true

    The role will utilize the intermediate CA to issue the EE or workload certs. We create a role called rh-custom-issuer, which will issue certs using pki_int_ca.

  5. Create the Vault role for authentication:

    1. Enable the approle authentication:

      $ vault auth enable approle

    2. Create the app role that we will use to authenticate with the Vault server:

      $ vault write auth/approle/role/rh-vault-pki-role \
    secret_id_ttl=0 \
    token_num_uses=10 \
    token_ttl=10m \
    token_max_ttl=15m \
    secret_id_num_uses=0 \
    policies=approle_policy

Configure the Vault issuer

Playbook: https://gitlab.com/cloudopslabs/cert-mgr-integ/-/blob/main/ansible/playbooks/integrate-ossm-vault.yml?ref_type=heads

  1. Configure the secret using the Vault approle secret-id:

    $ vault read auth/approle/role/rh-vault-pki-role/role-id

    1. Get the role-id associated with the approle:

    2. Get the secret-id associated with the approle:

      $ vault write -f auth/approle/role/rh-vault-pki-role/secret-id

    3. Create a Kubernetes secret object using the secret from the above command:

      $ oc create secret generic rh-vault-pki-role --from-literal secretId=<secret-id>

  2. Create the Vault issuer. This is a cert-manager resource that uses the PKI infra in Vault to issue certs.The issuer, once created, will be able to authenticate to Vault to issue the certs.

    $ cat <<EOF|oc apply -f -
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: istio-ca
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  vault:
    path: pki_int/sign/cluster-dot-local
    server: https://<VAULT_SERVER_URL>
    auth:
      appRole:
        path: approle
        roleId: <APPROLE_ROLE_ID>
        secretRef:
          name: rh-vault-pki-role
          key: secretId
EOF

  3. Verify the issuer that we just created by checking the status shows up as Vault Verified:

    $ oc get issuer istio-ca -o wide

Install istio-csr

Playbook: https://gitlab.com/cloudopslabs/cert-mgr-integ/-/blob/main/ansible/playbooks/install-istio-csr.yml?ref_type=heads

  1. Configure the secret containing the intermediate root CA:

    $ oc create secret generic istio-root-ca --from-file ca.pem=./RH_Custom_Intermediate_CA.pem -n istio-system

    The intermediate cert, RH_Custom_intermediate_CA.pem, is the one we saved locally when we created it using the Vault command under the previous section. We created this manually in the istio-csr bootstrapping process instead of letting it be auto-discovered by istio-csr.

  2. Use Helm to install istio-csr with the overridden values:

    $ helm install istio-csr jetstack/cert-manager-istio-csr -n istio-system -f ./vault-istio-csr-values.yaml

    vault-istio-csr--values.yaml:

    replicaCount: 1
image:
  repository: quay.io/jetstack/cert-manager-istio-csr
  tag: v0.6.0
app:
  certmanager:
    namespace: istio-system
    issuer:
      group: cert-manager.io
      kind: Issuer
      name: istio-ca
  controller:
    configmapNamespaceSelector: "maistra.io/member-of=istio-system"
    leaderElectionNamespace: istio-system
  istio:
    namespace: istio-system
    revisions: ["basic"] # This must match the name of the SMCP
  server:
    maxCertificateDuration: 5m
  tls:
    rootCAFile: /var/certs/ca.pem
    certificateDNSNames:
    # This DNS name must be set in the SMCP spec.security.certificateAuthority.cert-manager.address
    - cert-manager-istio-csr.istio-system.svc
volumes:
- name: istio-root-ca
  secret:
    secretName: istio-root-ca # This name of this secret should be the same as created above
volumeMounts:
- name: istio-root-ca
  mountPath: /var/certs

  3. Ensure that the istio-csr pods are running in the ServiceMeshControlPlane (SMCP) namespace, istio-system:

    $ oc get pods -n istio-system

  4. Check that the secret istiod-tls was successfully created:

    $ oc get secret istiod-tls -n istio-system

  5. Ensure that certificates are in Ready state:

    $ oc get certificate istiod -n istio-system

Configure SMCP and deploy the sample application

  1. Configure ServiceMeshControlPlane:

    $ cat <<EOF|oc apply -f -
apiVersion: maistra.io/v2
kind: ServiceMeshControlPlane
metadata:
  name: basic
  namespace: istio-system  
spec:
  version: v2.4
  addons:
    grafana:
      enabled: true
    jaeger:
      install:
        storage:
          type: Memory
    kiali:
      enabled: true
    prometheus:
      enabled: true
  security:
    certificateAuthority:
      cert-manager:
        address: 'cert-manager-istio-csr.istio-system.svc:443'
      type: cert-manager
    identity:
      type: ThirdParty# when security.certificateAuthority.type=cert-manager
    controlPlane:
      mtls: true      
    dataPlane:
      mtls: true 
  telemetry:
    type: Istiod
  tracing:
    type: Jaeger
EOF

  2. Configure ServiceMeshMemberRoll:

    $ cat <<EOF|oc apply -f -
apiVersion: maistra.io/v1
kind: ServiceMeshMemberRoll
metadata:
  name: default
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  members:
  - httpbin
EOF

  3. Deploy the sample applications:

    $ oc new-project httpbin
    $ oc apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maistra/istio/maistra-2.4/samples/httpbin/httpbin.yaml
    $ oc apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maistra/istio/maistra-2.4/samples/sleep/sleep.yaml

Verify workloads

  1. Verify workload certs:

    $ oc -n httpbin exec "$(oc -n httpbin get pod -l app=sleep -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})" -c istio-proxy -- openssl s_client -showcerts -connect httpbin:8000 > httpbin-proxy-cert.txt

  2. Inspect the first few lines from the content of the file. They should match the information that we used to set up the Vault infra:

    depth=2 C = US, O = Red Hat Consulting, OU = RH-FSI, CN = RH Custom Root CA
verify return:1
depth=1 C = US, O = Red Hat Consulting, OU = RH-FSI, CN = RH Custom Intermediate CA
verify return:1
depth=0 C = US, O = Red Hat Consulting, OU = RH-SPPRT

    Compare the contents of the file with the contents of the istio-root-ca secret to ensure that the cert chain from the workload matches the intermediate root CA chain.

  3. Look for the mTLS icon in Kiali, as shown in Figure 3.

    Kiali graph depicting the mTLS traffic with the lock icon.
    Figure 3: Kiali graph depicting the mTLS traffic with the lock icon.

References

Last updated: September 19, 2023

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