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Secret Dragons
Secret Dragons

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Secret Dragons
whoami
Marcus Maxwell
Technical Consultant
● AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
● Certified Kubernetes Administrator
https://twitter.com/mindful_monk
marcus.maxwell@contino.io

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Secret Dragons

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Secret Dragons
Agenda
● History of Secrets ( plain text files, encrypted spreadsheet, pwman, keypass,
passwordstore)
● Keeping secrets with ansible-vault
● Keeping secrets with Jenkins
● Trying to use Enterprise Secret Stores(CyberArk)
● DevOps Secret Stores 2.0 (HashiCorp Vault, Conjur, Keywhiz)

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Secret Dragons
Who uses HashiCorp Vault?

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Secret Dragons
History of Secrets

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Secret Dragons

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Secret Dragons
Physical Secrets
● Post-it notes
● Notebook
● Single password in your head

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Secret Dragons

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Secret Dragons
Plaintext files
● Still in use
● Sometimes base64 encoded
● Sometimes hashed
● Sometimes on NFS
● Post-it note on the windows desktop
● OneNote

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Secret Dragons
Confluence/Sharepoint
● Locked down access
● Sometimes with a fancy plugin
https://www.servicerocket.com/add-on/security-and-encryption

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Secret Dragons
Spreadsheets
● Usually on an NFS
● Hopefully password protected
● Outdated like hell
● Pretty much used by everyone not in the IT department

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Secret Dragons
Old apps still in use
● Password Safe pwsafe.org probably most common solution inside of teams,
made by Bruce Shneier
● Keepass

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Secret Dragons
The various git methods
● git-crypt
● BlackBox https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox
● pass - gpg file

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Secret Dragons
CM Tools
● Puppet - Hiera eyaml
● Chef - encrypted databags
● Ansible Vault

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Enterprise Solution
● CyberArk
● Thycotic Secret Server
● Pleasant Password Server

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Secret Dragons
Browser based password managers
● Lastpass
● Dashlane
● 1Password

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Secret Dragons
Jenkins

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Secret Dragons
Cloud Based
● CredStash https://github.com/fugue/credstash
● AWS Secret Store(Parameter Store)
● Azure Key Vault
● Confidant (secrets in dynamodb)
● Sneaker (secrets in s3 buckets)

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Secret Dragons
Container Native
● Kubernetes Secrets
● Docker Secrets
● Rancher Secrets
● Aquasec Secrets

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Secret Dragons
The New Wave
● HashiCorp Vault
● Keywhiz
● Conjur

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Problems with Secret Management
● If it gets compromised, how do I rotate all my secrets? Most don’t have
support for that
● Lack of granular permissions
● Chicken and egg problem, where do you keep the password to decrypt the
passwords? (Secure Introduction)
● Start to completely break down once you try to use them in a more dynamic
atmosphere
● Usually no AD integration
● Enterprise solutions cost an arm and a leg

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Secret Dragons
A note on SSL Certificates
● Usually out of scope
● Usually managed by some team nobody really knows about
● Rarely an API to get one
● Usually takes 1-2 weeks and requires filling out a 10 page .doc
● People just don’t bother and have invalid cert errors all the time
● curl -k yo
● Many better options available: HashiCorp Vault, Lemur, cloudflare ssl

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Secret Dragons
Some tips
● APIs or GTFO
● Dynamic > Static
● Optimize for rotating secrets in the whole estate
● Ensure self-service
● Validate container use-case as most solutions won’t fit and can be discarded

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Secret Dragons
Summary
● Talk to the developers
● Find out how secrets are currently being stored in your organization
● Come up with a transition plan
● Start on-boarding teams to the new secret store
● and most importantly don’t end up like this

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Secret Dragons
Learn more
● Modern Secret Managements with Vault
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqigxGccezI
● Vault vs other products https://www.vaultproject.io/intro/vs/index.html
● [Webinar] Securing Ansible Deployments With HashiCorp Vault
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCTgi6fKXcM

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Secret Dragonscontino.io info@contino.io
@ContinoHQ
@ContinoHQ
Contino
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