apiVersion: maistra.io/v2
kind: ServiceMeshControlPlane
spec:
version: v2.4
security:
dataPlane:
mtls: true
If your service mesh application is constructed with a complex array of microservices, you can use Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh to customize the security of the communication between those services. The infrastructure of OpenShift Container Platform along with the traffic management features of Service Mesh help you manage the complexity of your applications and secure microservices.
If you have a project, add your project to the ServiceMeshMemberRoll
resource.
If you don’t have a project, install the Bookinfo sample application and add it to the ServiceMeshMemberRoll
resource. The sample application helps illustrate security concepts.
Mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) is a protocol that enables two parties to authenticate each other. It is the default mode of authentication in some protocols (IKE, SSH) and optional in others (TLS). You can use mTLS without changes to the application or service code. The TLS is handled entirely by the service mesh infrastructure and between the two sidecar proxies.
By default, mTLS in Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh is enabled and set to permissive mode, where the sidecars in Service Mesh accept both plain-text traffic and connections that are encrypted using mTLS. If a service in your mesh is communicating with a service outside the mesh, strict mTLS could break communication between those services. Use permissive mode while you migrate your workloads to Service Mesh. Then, you can enable strict mTLS across your mesh, namespace, or application.
Enabling mTLS across your mesh at the Service Mesh control plane level secures all the traffic in your service mesh without rewriting your applications and workloads. You can secure namespaces in your mesh at the data plane level in the ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource. To customize traffic encryption connections, configure namespaces at the application level with PeerAuthentication
and DestinationRule
resources.
If your workloads do not communicate with outside services, you can quickly enable mTLS across your mesh without communication interruptions. You can enable it by setting spec.security.dataPlane.mtls
to true
in the ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource. The Operator creates the required resources.
apiVersion: maistra.io/v2
kind: ServiceMeshControlPlane
spec:
version: v2.4
security:
dataPlane:
mtls: true
You can also enable mTLS by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console.
Log in to the web console.
Click the Project menu and select the project where you installed the Service Mesh control plane, for example istio-system.
Click Operators → Installed Operators.
Click Service Mesh Control Plane under Provided APIs.
Click the name of your ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource, for example, basic
.
On the Details page, click the toggle in the Security section for Data Plane Security.
You can also configure mTLS for individual services by creating a policy.
Create a YAML file using the following example.
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: PeerAuthentication
metadata:
name: default
namespace: <namespace>
spec:
mtls:
mode: STRICT
Replace <namespace>
with the namespace where the service is located.
Run the following command to create the resource in the namespace where the service is located. It must match the namespace
field in the Policy resource you just created.
$ oc create -n <namespace> -f <policy.yaml>
If you are not using automatic mTLS and you are setting |
Create a destination rule to configure Service Mesh to use mTLS when sending requests to other services in the mesh.
Create a YAML file using the following example.
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
name: default
namespace: <namespace>
spec:
host: "*.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local"
trafficPolicy:
tls:
mode: ISTIO_MUTUAL
Replace <namespace>
with the namespace where the service is located.
Run the following command to create the resource in the namespace where the service is located. It must match the namespace
field in the DestinationRule
resource you just created.
$ oc create -n <namespace> -f <destination-rule.yaml>
If your environment has specific requirements for encrypted traffic in your service mesh, you can control the cryptographic functions that are allowed by setting the spec.security.controlPlane.tls.minProtocolVersion
or spec.security.controlPlane.tls.maxProtocolVersion
in your ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource. Those values, configured in your Service Mesh control plane resource, define the minimum and maximum TLS version used by mesh components when communicating securely over TLS.
The default is TLS_AUTO
and does not specify a version of TLS.
Value | Description |
---|---|
|
default |
|
TLS version 1.0 |
|
TLS version 1.1 |
|
TLS version 1.2 |
|
TLS version 1.3 |
Log in to the web console.
Click the Project menu and select the project where you installed the Service Mesh control plane, for example istio-system.
Click Operators → Installed Operators.
Click Service Mesh Control Plane under Provided APIs.
Click the name of your ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource, for example, basic
.
Click the YAML tab.
Insert the following code snippet in the YAML editor. Replace the value in the minProtocolVersion
with the TLS version value. In this example, the minimum TLS version is set to TLSv1_2
.
kind: ServiceMeshControlPlane
spec:
security:
controlPlane:
tls:
minProtocolVersion: TLSv1_2
Click Save.
Click Refresh to verify that the changes updated correctly.
The Kiali console offers several ways to validate whether or not your applications, services, and workloads have mTLS encryption enabled.
At the right side of the masthead, Kiali shows a lock icon when the mesh has strictly enabled mTLS for the whole service mesh. It means that all communications in the mesh use mTLS.
Kiali displays a hollow lock icon when either the mesh is configured in PERMISSIVE
mode or there is a error in the mesh-wide mTLS configuration.
The Graph page has the option to display a Security badge on the graph edges to indicate that mTLS is enabled. To enable security badges on the graph, from the Display menu, under Show Badges, select the Security checkbox. When an edge shows a lock icon, it means at least one request with mTLS enabled is present. In case there are both mTLS and non-mTLS requests, the side-panel will show the percentage of requests that use mTLS.
The Applications Detail Overview page displays a Security icon on the graph edges where at least one request with mTLS enabled is present.
The Workloads Detail Overview page displays a Security icon on the graph edges where at least one request with mTLS enabled is present.
The Services Detail Overview page displays a Security icon on the graph edges where at least one request with mTLS enabled is present. Also note that Kiali displays a lock icon in the Network section next to ports that are configured for mTLS.
Role-based access control (RBAC) objects determine whether a user or service is allowed to perform a given action within a project. You can define mesh-, namespace-, and workload-wide access control for your workloads in the mesh.
To configure RBAC, create an AuthorizationPolicy
resource in the namespace for which you are configuring access. If you are configuring mesh-wide access, use the project where you installed the Service Mesh control plane, for example istio-system
.
For example, with RBAC, you can create policies that:
Configure intra-project communication.
Allow or deny full access to all workloads in the default namespace.
Allow or deny ingress gateway access.
Require a token for access.
An authorization policy includes a selector, an action, and a list of rules:
The selector
field specifies the target of the policy.
The action
field specifies whether to allow or deny the request.
The rules
field specifies when to trigger the action.
The from
field specifies constraints on the request origin.
The to
field specifies constraints on request target and parameters.
The when
field specifies additional conditions that to apply the rule.
Create your AuthorizationPolicy
resource. The following example shows a resource that updates the ingress-policy AuthorizationPolicy
to deny an IP address from accessing the ingress gateway.
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
name: ingress-policy
namespace: istio-system
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: istio-ingressgateway
action: DENY
rules:
- from:
- source:
ipBlocks: ["1.2.3.4"]
Run the following command after you write your resource to create your resource in your namespace. The namespace must match your metadata.namespace
field in your AuthorizationPolicy
resource.
$ oc create -n istio-system -f <filename>
Consider the following examples for other common configurations.
You can use AuthorizationPolicy
to configure your Service Mesh control plane to allow or deny the traffic communicating with your mesh or services in your mesh.
You can deny requests from any source that is not in the bookinfo
namespace with the following AuthorizationPolicy
resource example.
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
name: httpbin-deny
namespace: bookinfo
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: httpbin
version: v1
action: DENY
rules:
- from:
- source:
notNamespaces: ["bookinfo"]
The following example shows an allow-all authorization policy that allows full access to all workloads in the bookinfo
namespace.
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
name: allow-all
namespace: bookinfo
spec:
action: ALLOW
rules:
- {}
The following example shows a policy that denies any access to all workloads in the bookinfo
namespace.
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
name: deny-all
namespace: bookinfo
spec:
{}
You can set an authorization policy to add allow or deny lists based on IP addresses.
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
name: ingress-policy
namespace: istio-system
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: istio-ingressgateway
action: ALLOW
rules:
- from:
- source:
ipBlocks: ["1.2.3.4", "5.6.7.0/24"]
You can restrict what can access your mesh with a JSON Web Token (JWT). After authentication, a user or service can access routes, services that are associated with that token.
Create a RequestAuthentication
resource, which defines the authentication methods that are supported by a workload. The following example accepts a JWT issued by http://localhost:8080/auth/realms/master
.
apiVersion: "security.istio.io/v1beta1"
kind: "RequestAuthentication"
metadata:
name: "jwt-example"
namespace: bookinfo
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: httpbin
jwtRules:
- issuer: "http://localhost:8080/auth/realms/master"
jwksUri: "http://keycloak.default.svc:8080/auth/realms/master/protocol/openid-connect/certs"
Then, create an AuthorizationPolicy
resource in the same namespace to work with RequestAuthentication
resource you created. The following example requires a JWT to be present in the Authorization
header when sending a request to httpbin
workloads.
apiVersion: "security.istio.io/v1beta1"
kind: "AuthorizationPolicy"
metadata:
name: "frontend-ingress"
namespace: bookinfo
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: httpbin
action: DENY
rules:
- from:
- source:
notRequestPrincipals: ["*"]
Cipher suites and Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH curves) can help you secure your service mesh. You can define a comma separated list of cipher suites using spec.security.controlplane.tls.cipherSuites
and ECDH curves using spec.security.controlplane.tls.ecdhCurves
in your ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource. If either of these attributes are empty, then the default values are used.
The cipherSuites
setting is effective if your service mesh uses TLS 1.2 or earlier. It has no effect when negotiating with TLS 1.3.
Set your cipher suites in the comma separated list in order of priority. For example, ecdhCurves: CurveP256, CurveP384
sets CurveP256
as a higher priority than CurveP384
.
You must include either |
The supported cipher suites are:
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256
TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA
TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA
The supported ECDH Curves are:
CurveP256
CurveP384
CurveP521
X25519
By default, Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh generates a self-signed root certificate and key and uses them to sign the workload certificates. You can also use the user-defined certificate and key to sign workload certificates with user-defined root certificate. This task demonstrates an example to plug certificates and key into Service Mesh.
Install Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh with mutual TLS enabled to configure certificates.
This example uses the certificates from the Maistra repository. For production, use your own certificates from your certificate authority.
Deploy the Bookinfo sample application to verify the results with these instructions.
OpenSSL is required to verify certificates.
To use an existing signing (CA) certificate and key, you must create a chain of trust file that includes the CA certificate, key, and root certificate. You must use the following exact file names for each of the corresponding certificates. The CA certificate is named ca-cert.pem
, the key is ca-key.pem
, and the root certificate, which signs ca-cert.pem
, is named root-cert.pem
. If your workload uses intermediate certificates, you must specify them in a cert-chain.pem
file.
Save the example certificates from the Maistra repository locally and replace <path>
with the path to your certificates.
Create a secret named cacert
that includes the input files ca-cert.pem
, ca-key.pem
, root-cert.pem
and cert-chain.pem
.
$ oc create secret generic cacerts -n istio-system --from-file=<path>/ca-cert.pem \
--from-file=<path>/ca-key.pem --from-file=<path>/root-cert.pem \
--from-file=<path>/cert-chain.pem
In the ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource set spec.security.dataPlane.mtls true
to true
and configure the certificateAuthority
field as shown in the following example. The default rootCADir
is /etc/cacerts
. You do not need to set the privateKey
if the key and certs are mounted in the default location. Service Mesh reads the certificates and key from the secret-mount files.
apiVersion: maistra.io/v2
kind: ServiceMeshControlPlane
spec:
security:
dataPlane:
mtls: true
certificateAuthority:
type: Istiod
istiod:
type: PrivateKey
privateKey:
rootCADir: /etc/cacerts
After creating/changing/deleting the cacert
secret, the Service Mesh control plane istiod
and gateway
pods must be restarted so the changes go into effect. Use the following command to restart the pods:
$ oc -n istio-system delete pods -l 'app in (istiod,istio-ingressgateway, istio-egressgateway)'
The Operator will automatically recreate the pods after they have been deleted.
Restart the bookinfo application pods so that the sidecar proxies pick up the secret changes. Use the following command to restart the pods:
$ oc -n bookinfo delete pods --all
You should see output similar to the following:
pod "details-v1-6cd699df8c-j54nh" deleted
pod "productpage-v1-5ddcb4b84f-mtmf2" deleted
pod "ratings-v1-bdbcc68bc-kmng4" deleted
pod "reviews-v1-754ddd7b6f-lqhsv" deleted
pod "reviews-v2-675679877f-q67r2" deleted
pod "reviews-v3-79d7549c7-c2gjs" deleted
Verify that the pods were created and are ready with the following command:
$ oc get pods -n bookinfo
Use the Bookinfo sample application to verify that the workload certificates are signed by the certificates that were plugged into the CA. This process requires that you have openssl
installed on your machine.
To extract certificates from bookinfo workloads use the following command:
$ sleep 60
$ oc -n bookinfo exec "$(oc -n bookinfo get pod -l app=productpage -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})" -c istio-proxy -- openssl s_client -showcerts -connect details:9080 > bookinfo-proxy-cert.txt
$ sed -n '/-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----/{:start /-----END CERTIFICATE-----/!{N;b start};/.*/p}' bookinfo-proxy-cert.txt > certs.pem
$ awk 'BEGIN {counter=0;} /BEGIN CERT/{counter++} { print > "proxy-cert-" counter ".pem"}' < certs.pem
After running the command, you should have three files in your working directory: proxy-cert-1.pem
, proxy-cert-2.pem
and proxy-cert-3.pem
.
Verify that the root certificate is the same as the one specified by the administrator. Replace <path>
with the path to your certificates.
$ openssl x509 -in <path>/root-cert.pem -text -noout > /tmp/root-cert.crt.txt
Run the following syntax at the terminal window.
$ openssl x509 -in ./proxy-cert-3.pem -text -noout > /tmp/pod-root-cert.crt.txt
Compare the certificates by running the following syntax at the terminal window.
$ diff -s /tmp/root-cert.crt.txt /tmp/pod-root-cert.crt.txt
You should see the following result:
Files /tmp/root-cert.crt.txt and /tmp/pod-root-cert.crt.txt are identical
Verify that the CA certificate is the same as the one specified by the administrator. Replace <path>
with the path to your certificates.
$ openssl x509 -in <path>/ca-cert.pem -text -noout > /tmp/ca-cert.crt.txt
Run the following syntax at the terminal window.
$ openssl x509 -in ./proxy-cert-2.pem -text -noout > /tmp/pod-cert-chain-ca.crt.txt
Compare the certificates by running the following syntax at the terminal window.
$ diff -s /tmp/ca-cert.crt.txt /tmp/pod-cert-chain-ca.crt.txt
You should see the following result:
Files /tmp/ca-cert.crt.txt and /tmp/pod-cert-chain-ca.crt.txt are identical.
Verify the certificate chain from the root certificate to the workload certificate. Replace <path>
with the path to your certificates.
$ openssl verify -CAfile <(cat <path>/ca-cert.pem <path>/root-cert.pem) ./proxy-cert-1.pem
You should see the following result:
./proxy-cert-1.pem: OK
To remove the certificates you added, follow these steps.
Remove the secret cacerts
. In this example, istio-system
is the name of the Service Mesh control plane project.
$ oc delete secret cacerts -n istio-system
Redeploy Service Mesh with a self-signed root certificate in the ServiceMeshControlPlane
resource.
apiVersion: maistra.io/v2
kind: ServiceMeshControlPlane
spec:
security:
dataPlane:
mtls: true
The cert-manager tool is a solution for X.509 certificate management on Kubernetes. It delivers a unified API to integrate applications with private or public key infrastructure (PKI), such as Vault, Google Cloud Certificate Authority Service, Let’s Encrypt, and other providers.
The cert-manager tool ensures the certificates are valid and up-to-date by attempting to renew certificates at a configured time before they expire.
For Istio users, cert-manager also provides integration with istio-csr
, which is a certificate authority (CA) server that handles certificate signing requests (CSR) from Istio proxies. The server then delegates signing to cert-manager, which forwards CSRs to the configured CA server.
Red Hat provides support for integrating with |
One of these versions of cert-manager:
cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift 1.10 or later
community cert-manager Operator 1.11 or later
cert-manager 1.11 or later
OpenShift Service Mesh Operator 2.4 or later
istio-csr
0.6.0 or later
To avoid creating config maps in all namespaces when the |
You can install the cert-manager
tool to manage the lifecycle of TLS certificates and ensure that they are valid and up-to-date. If you are running Istio in your environment, you can also install the istio-csr
certificate authority (CA) server, which handles certificate signing requests (CSR) from Istio proxies. The istio-csr
CA delegates signing to the cert-manager
tool, which delegates to the configured CA.
Create the root cluster issuer:
$ oc apply -f cluster-issuer.yaml
$ oc apply -n istio-system -f istio-ca.yaml
cluster-issuer.yaml
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
name: selfsigned-root-issuer
namespace: cert-manager
spec:
selfSigned: {}
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
name: root-ca
namespace: cert-manager
spec:
isCA: true
duration: 21600h # 900d
secretName: root-ca
commonName: root-ca.my-company.net
subject:
organizations:
- my-company.net
issuerRef:
name: selfsigned-root-issuer
kind: Issuer
group: cert-manager.io
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
name: root-ca
spec:
ca:
secretName: root-ca
istio-ca.yaml
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
name: istio-ca
namespace: istio-system
spec:
isCA: true
duration: 21600h
secretName: istio-ca
commonName: istio-ca.my-company.net
subject:
organizations:
- my-company.net
issuerRef:
name: root-ca
kind: ClusterIssuer
group: cert-manager.io
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
name: istio-ca
namespace: istio-system
spec:
ca:
secretName: istio-ca
The namespace of the selfsigned-root-issuer issuer and root-ca certificate is cert-manager because root-ca is a cluster issuer, so the cert-manager looks for a referenced secret in its own namespace. Its own namespace is cert-manager in the case of the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
|
Install istio-csr
:
$ helm install istio-csr jetstack/cert-manager-istio-csr \
-n istio-system \
-f deploy/examples/cert-manager/istio-csr/istio-csr.yaml
istio-csr.yaml
replicaCount: 2
image:
repository: quay.io/jetstack/cert-manager-istio-csr
tag: v0.6.0
pullSecretName: ""
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"]
server:
maxCertificateDuration: 5m
tls:
certificateDNSNames:
# This DNS name must be set in the SMCP spec.security.certificateAuthority.cert-manager.address
- cert-manager-istio-csr.istio-system.svc
Deploy SMCP:
$ oc apply -f mesh.yaml -n istio-system
mesh.yaml
apiVersion: maistra.io/v2
kind: ServiceMeshControlPlane
metadata:
name: basic
spec:
addons:
grafana:
enabled: false
kiali:
enabled: false
prometheus:
enabled: false
proxy:
accessLogging:
file:
name: /dev/stdout
security:
certificateAuthority:
cert-manager:
address: cert-manager-istio-csr.istio-system.svc:443
type: cert-manager
dataPlane:
mtls: true
identity:
type: ThirdParty
tracing:
type: None
---
apiVersion: maistra.io/v1
kind: ServiceMeshMemberRoll
metadata:
name: default
spec:
members:
- httpbin
- sleep
security.identity.type: ThirdParty must be set when security.certificateAuthority.type: cert-manager is configured.
|
Use the sample httpbin
service and sleep
app to check mTLS traffic from ingress gateways and verify that the cert-manager
tool is installed.
Deploy the HTTP and sleep
apps:
$ oc new-project <namespace>
$ 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 that sleep
can access the httpbin
service:
$ oc exec "$(oc get pod -l app=sleep -n <namespace> \
-o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})" -c sleep -n <namespace> -- \
curl http://httpbin.<namespace>:8000/ip -s -o /dev/null \
-w "%{http_code}\n"
200
Check mTLS traffic from the ingress gateway to the httpbin
service:
$ oc apply -n <namespace> -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maistra/istio/maistra-2.4/samples/httpbin/httpbin-gateway.yaml
Get the istio-ingressgateway
route:
ingress_HOST=$(oc -n istio-system get routes istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.host}')
Verify mTLS traffic from the ingress gateway to the httpbin
service:
$ curl -s -I http://$ingress_HOST/headers -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" -s
For information about how to install the cert-manager Operator for OpenShift Container Platform, see: Installing the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.