cault

Consul and Vault are started together in two separate, but linked, docker containers.

Vault is configured to use a consul secret backend.

---

• Start Consul and Vault
• Getting Vault Ready
  • Init Vault
  • Unsealing Vault
  • Auth with Vault
• Making sure it actually works
  • Watch Consul logs
  • Writing / Reading Secrets
  • Response Wrapping
    • System Backend
    • Cubbyhole Backend
• Troubleshooting
  • Bad Image Caches
• License

Start Consul and Vault

docker-compose up -d

Getting Vault Ready

Login to the Vault image:

docker exec -it cault_vault_1 sh

Check Vault's status:

$ vault status
Error checking seal status: Error making API request.

URL: GET http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/seal-status
Code: 400. Errors:

* server is not yet initialized

Because Vault is not yet initialized, it is sealed, that's why Consul will show you a sealed critial status:

Init Vault

$ vault operator init
Unseal Key 1: d28dc3e20848c499749450b411bdc55416cefb0ff6ddefd01ec02088aa5c90aa01
Unseal Key 2: ad2b7e9d02d0c1cb5b98fafbc2e3ea56bd4d4fa112a0c61882c1179d6c6585f302
Unseal Key 3: c393269f177ba3d07b14dbf14e25a325205dfbf5c91769b8e55bf91aff693ce603
Unseal Key 4: 87c605e5f766d2f76d39756b486cbdafbb1998e72d2f766c40911f1a288e53a404
Unseal Key 5: e97e5de7e2cdb0ec4db55461c4aaf4dc26092cb3f698d9cc270bf19dbb82eab105
Initial Root Token: 5a4a7e11-1e2f-6f76-170e-b8ec58cd2da5

Vault initialized with 5 keys and a key threshold of 3. Please
securely distribute the above keys. When the Vault is re-sealed,
restarted, or stopped, you must provide at least 3 of these keys
to unseal it again.

Vault does not store the master key. Without at least 3 keys,
your Vault will remain permanently sealed.

notice Vault says:

you must provide at least 3 of these keys to unseal it again

hence it needs to be unsealed 3 times with 3 different keys (out of the 5 above)

Unsealing Vault

$ vault operator unseal
Key (will be hidden):
Sealed: true
Key Shares: 5
Key Threshold: 3
Unseal Progress: 1

$ vault operator unseal
Key (will be hidden):
Sealed: true
Key Shares: 5
Key Threshold: 3
Unseal Progress: 2

$ vault operator unseal
Key (will be hidden):
Sealed: false
Key Shares: 5
Key Threshold: 3
Unseal Progress: 0

the Vault is now unsealed:

Auth with Vault

We can use the Initial Root Token from above to auth with the Vault:

$ vault login
Token (will be hidden):
Successfully authenticated! You are now logged in.
token: 5a4a7e11-1e2f-6f76-170e-b8ec58cd2da5
token_duration: 0
token_policies: [root]

---

All done: now you have both Consul and Vault running side by side.

Making sure it actually works

From the host environment (i.e. outside of the docker image):

alias vault='docker exec -it cault_vault_1 vault "$@"'

This will allow to run vault commands without a need to logging in to the image.

the reason commands will work is because you just auth'ed (logged into Vault) with a root token inside the image in the previous step.

Watch Consul logs

In one terminal tail Consul logs:

$ docker logs cault_consul_1 -f

Writing / Reading Secrets

In the other terminal run vault commands:

$ vault write -address=http://127.0.0.1:8200 secret/billion-dollars value=behind-super-secret-password

Success! Data written to: secret/billion-dollars

Check the Consul log, you should see something like:

2016/12/28 06:52:09 [DEBUG] http: Request PUT /v1/kv/vault/logical/a77e1d7f-a404-3439-29dc-34a34dfbfcd2/billion-dollars (199.657µs) from=172.28.0.3:50260

Let's read it back:

$ vault read secret/billion-dollars

Key             	Value
---             	-----
refresh_interval	2592000
value           	behind-super-secret-password

And it is in fact in Consul:

Response Wrapping

NOTE: for these examples to work you would need jq (i.e. to parse JSON responses from Vault).

brew install jq or apt-get install jq or similar

System backend

Running with a System Secret Backend.

Export Vault env vars for the local scripts to work:

$ export VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200
$ export VAULT_TOKEN=5a4a7e11-1e2f-6f76-170e-b8ec58cd2da5  ### root token you remembered from initializing Vault

At the root of cault project there is creds.json file (you can create your own of course):

$ cat creds.json

{"username": "ceo",
 "password": "behind-super-secret-password"}

We can write it to a "one time place" in Vault. This one time place will be accessible by a "one time token" Vault will return from a /sys/wrapping/wrap endpoint:

$ token=`./tools/vault/wrap-token.sh creds.json`

$ echo $token
7c0c0c6a-47c5-58cf-1c7a-a86c7537d795

You can checkout wrap-token.sh script, it uses /sys/wrapping/wrap Vault's endpoint to secretly persist creds.json and return a token for it that will be valid for 60 seconds.

Now let's use this token to unwrap the secret:

$ ./tools/vault/unwrap-token.sh $token

{"password": "behind-super-secret-password",
 "username": "ceo" }

You can checkout unwrap-token.sh script, it uses /sys/wrapping/unwrap Vault's endpoint

Let's try to use the same token again:

$ ./tools/vault/unwrap-token.sh $token
["wrapping token is not valid or does not exist"]

i.e. Vault takes one time pretty seriously.

Cubbyhole backend

Running with a Cubbyhole Secret Backend.

Export Vault env vars for the local scripts to work:

$ export VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200
$ export VAULT_TOKEN=5a4a7e11-1e2f-6f76-170e-b8ec58cd2da5  ### root token you remembered from initializing Vault

Create a cubbyhole for the billion-dollars secret, and wrap it in a one time use token:

$ token=`./tools/vault/cubbyhole-wrap-token.sh /secret/billion-dollars`

let's look at it:

$ echo $token
141ad3d2-2035-9d7b-c284-ce119f39fc5d

looks like any other token, but it is in fact a one time use token, only for this cobbyhole.

Let's use it:

$ curl -s -H "X-Vault-Token: $token" -X GET $VAULT_ADDR/v1/cubbyhole/response

{"lease_id": "",
 "renewable": false,
 "lease_duration": 0,
 "data": {
   "response": {
     "lease_id": "",
     "renewable": false,
     "lease_duration": 2592000,
     "data": {
       "value": "behind-super-secret-password"
     },
     "wrap_info": null,
     "warnings": null,
     "auth": null
   }
 },
 "wrap_info": null,
 "warnings": null,
 "auth": null}

Let's try to use it again:

$ curl -s -H "X-Vault-Token: $token" -X GET $VAULT_ADDR/v1/cubbyhole/response

{"errors":["permission denied"]}

Vault takes one time pretty seriously.

Troubleshooting

Bad Image Caches

In case there are some stale / stopped cached images, you might get connection exceptions:

failed to check for initialization: Get v1/kv/vault/core/keyring: dial tcp i/o timeout

reconcile unable to talk with Consul backend: error=service registration failed: /v1/agent/service/register

you can purge stopped images to solve that:

docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

License

Copyright © 2017 tolitius

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License either version 1.0 or (at your option) any later version.