Secrets Manager Kubernetes Operator

The Bitwarden Secrets Manager Kubernetes Operator will allow teams to integrate Secrets Manager into Kubernetes workflows securely and efficiently. Using the operator, which is deployed using Helm package manager, secrets can be stored and retrieved from Secrets Manager.

Bitwarden Secrets Manager Kubernetes Operator

The sm-operator uses a controller to synchronize Bitwarden secrets into Kubernetes secrets. The operator registers the Custom Resource Definition: BitwardenSecret into the Kubernetes cluster. The cluster will listen for the newly registered BitwardenSecret, and synchronize on a configurable interval.

To get started, an active Bitwarden organization with Secrets Manager is required. Additionally, one or more access tokens associated with a machine account are required.

Additional dependencies

• kubectl

• Helm 3

Add the Bitwarden Secrets Manager chart repository:

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helm repo add bitwarden https://charts.bitwarden.com/

Update information of locally available charts:

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helm repo update

Create a configuration file

Create a custom values file used for deployment:

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helm show values bitwarden/sm-operator --devel > my-values.yaml

Update configuration file

Locate my-values.yaml and fill out required values. An example can be located in the Bitwarden repository. We recommend that the following values be adjusted for your setup:

Once your values.yaml file has been configured, upgrade the release to a new chart by running:

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helm upgrade sm-operator bitwarden/sm-operator -i --debug -n sm-operator-system --create-namespace --values my-values.yaml --devel

This command installs or upgrades a release with the name sm-operator, in the namespace sm-operator-system, with the values from my-values.yaml.

To synchronize secrets stored in Bitwarden Secrets Manager into Kubernetes secrets, we must create a BitwardenSecret object.

1. Create a Kubernetes secret to authenticate with Secrets Manager:
   

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   kubectl create secret generic bw-auth-token -n <YOUR_NAMESPACE> --from-literal=token="<TOKEN_HERE>"

   warning

   This command is recorded in your shell history. To avoid exposing access token data, consider deploying with an ephemeral pipeline agent.

The BitwardenSecret object is the synchronization setting that will be used by the operator to create and synchronize a Kubernetes secret. The Kubernetes secret belongs to a namespace and will be injected with the data that the Secrets Manager machine account has access to.

Example BitwardenSecret deployment with custom mapping:

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cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -n <YOUR_NAMESPACE> -f -
apiVersion: k8s.bitwarden.com/v1
kind: BitwardenSecret
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: bitwardensecret
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: bitwardensecret-sample
    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: sm-operator
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
    app.kubernetes.io/created-by: sm-operator
  name: bitwardensecret-sample
spec:
  organizationId: "a08a8157-129e-4002-bab4-b118014ca9c7"
  secretName: bw-sample-secret
  map:
    - bwSecretId: 6c230265-d472-45f7-b763-b11b01023ca6
       secretKeyName: test__secret__1
    - bwSecretId: d132a5ed-12bd-49af-9b74-b11b01025d58
       secretKeyName: test__secret__2
  authToken:
    secretName: bw-auth-token
    secretKey: token
EOF

In the BitwardenSecret deployment example, the custom map element is optional.

To make generated secrets easier to use, you can create a map of Bitwarden Secrets IDs to Kubernetes secret keys. The generated secret will replace the Bitwarden Secret IDs with the mapped name you provide.

Available map settings:

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apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-deployment
  labels:
    app: my-deployment
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-deployment
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: my-deployment
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: my-deployment
        image: <some-image>
      imagePullSecrets:
      - name: <my-secret-name>
      envFrom:
      - secretRef:
          name: bw-sample-secret