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chef_vault_pki (13) Versions 1.4.1

Uses chef-vault to provide an easy-to-manage Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for servers managed by Chef.

Policyfile
Berkshelf
Knife
cookbook 'chef_vault_pki', '= 1.4.1', :supermarket
cookbook 'chef_vault_pki', '= 1.4.1'
knife supermarket install chef_vault_pki
knife supermarket download chef_vault_pki
README
Dependencies
Quality -%

chef_vault_pki cookbook

Uses chef-vault to provide an easy-to-manage Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for servers managed by Chef.

Instead of having to manage and secure a CA, chef_vault_pki lets you generate a CA cert and key which is then stored and secured using chef-vault. Authorised clients can then obtain the CA cert and key, and automatically generate and sign their certificates.

Requirements

Depends on chef-vault and sensu_spec cookbooks.

Usage

Creating a CA

Install the chef-vault-pki command on your workstation.

Install the gem:

$ gem install chef-vault-pki

Running chef-vault-pki will generate a CA certificate and key, and will output the PEMs as JSON by default. We pass this directly to chef-vault to create an encrypted data bag.

$ chef-vault-pki | knife vault create chef_vault_pki chef_vault_pki_ca -J /dev/stdin --search 'role:base' --admins admin-user

We can see chef-vault created the data bag as required.

$ ls data_bags/chef_vault_pki/
chef_vault_pki_ca.json    chef_vault_pki_ca_keys.json

See the chef-vault documentation for more information on managing data bags encrypted with chef-vault.

Using chef_vault_pki in a recipe

chef_vault_pki provides an LWRP that can be used in your cookbooks. To use it, add this to your cookbook's metadata.rb

depends 'chef_vault_pki'

Then install with berks install.

Basic usage will use the defaults set in attributes (see below):

chef_vault_pki node.name

Note that the name has spaces automatically converted to underscores (_).

Maybe you need make things a little more specifc:

chef_vault_pki "sensu_#{node.name}"

Or even override the default attributes:

chef_vault_pki "sensu_#{node.name}" do
  ca 'sensu_ca'
  path '/opt/chef_vault_pki'
  owner 'sensu'
  group 'sensu'
  public_mode 0644
  private_mode 0600
  bundle_ca true
end

This final example will create three files in /opt/chef_vault_pki:

  • sensu_NODENAME.crt (uses public_mode)
  • sensu_NODENAME.key (uses private_mode)
  • sensu_ca.crt (uses public_mode)

These files can then be used by applications requiring a TLS PKI.

You can get the certificates of other nodes using a search. E.g. for the above sensu_ca client we might have:

certs = search(:node, "name:*").first['chef_vault_pki']['certs']['sensu_ca']

Security

This approach to managing a PKI isn't suitable for many situations. The generated CA private key is basically treated as a shared key or password between all authorised (through chef-vault) clients.

It is assumes you that trust all clients and the workstation that created the CA. It also assumes you trust chef-vault.

Because it treats the CA key as a shared key, you cannot revoke a certificate in the traditonal sense. In the same way that a shared password compromise requires the password to be changed everywhere, so it is with chef_vault_pki. However, updating the CA key is as simple as re-creating the data bag using the chef-vault-pki and chef-vault commands as above. All nodes will automatically detect the CA has changed and will generate new certificates during their next run.

If you want to regenerate a certificate for a client, just delete the CA certificate file on the file system. This will make the client think the CA has changed and so will regenerate all the files.

Attributes

Attributes are used to set the defaults for the chef_vault_pki resource. This allows you to override values per resource, or for the node.

See attributes/default.rb for defaults.

  • node['chef_vault_pki']['data_bag'] - name of the chef_vault data bag
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['ca'] - name of the CA
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['expires'] - certificate expiry period (in days by default)
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['expires_factor'] - used to calculate the period (a day by default)
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['key_size'] - key size to use
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['path'] - where generated certs etc go (managed by Chef)
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['path_mode'] - permissions of the path
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['path_recursive'] - recursively create the path
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['owner'] - file and path owner
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['group'] - file and path group
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['public_mode'] - permissions of public files (e.g. certs)
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['private_mode'] - permissions of private files (e.g. keys)
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['bundle_ca'] - this bundles the ca cert with the client cert
  • node['chef_vault_pki']['standalone'] - doesn't attempt to read the ca from chef-vault, but generates on instead (e.g. for testing)

Generated client certs are added to the node attributes:

  • node['chef_vault_pki']['certs'][CA_NAME][CERT_NAME] = CERT

Recipes

  • chef_vault_pki::test - used by test-kitchen

Contributing

  1. Fork it
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create new Pull Request

Author

zeroXten - fraser.scott@gmail.com

Dependent cookbooks

sensu_spec ~> 0.4
apt ~> 2.3

Contingent cookbooks

There are no cookbooks that are contingent upon this one.

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