Authentication with the data plane proxy

    On Kubernetes, a data plane proxy proves its identity with the that is mounted in every pod.

    Keep in mind that if you don’t explicitly specify in Deployment, the Pod is run with the default Service Account Token in the Namespace. This means that authentication scope is bound to a Namespace, so any Pod in the Namespace can authenticate as any other Pod in a Namespace.

    To have a strict security bound to a Deployment, every Deployment should use unique Service Account Token. On top of that, users should not be able to modify serviceAccountTokenName in Deployment. This can be achieved for example with OPA Gatekeeper.

    Service Account Token is not bound to a mesh, see how to restrict which Pods can join a mesh.

    On Universal, a data plane proxy must be explicitly configured with a unique security token (data plane proxy token) that will be used to prove its identity.

    The data plane proxy token is a that contains:

    • Mesh to which data plane belongs (required)
    • The name of a data plane proxy (optional)
    • List of tags that are permitted to use (optional)
    • Expiration date of the token (required, 10 years if not specified)

    The Data plane proxy token is signed by a signing key that is autogenerated when Mesh is created. Tokens are never stored in the control plane, the only thing that is stored are signing keys that are used to verify if a token is valid. The signing key is RSA256 encrypted.

    You can check for the signing key:

    which returns something like:

    1. MESH      NAME                                    AGE
    2. default   dataplane-token-signing-key-default-1   49s
    1. curl -XPOST \
    2.   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    3.   --data '{"name": "dp-echo-1", "mesh": "default", "tags": {"kuma.io/service": ["backend", "backend-admin"]}, "validFor": "720h"}' \
    4.   http://localhost:5681/tokens/dataplane

    or by using kumactl

    1. kumactl generate dataplane-token \
    2.   --name dp-echo-1 \
    3.   --mesh default \
    4.   --valid-for 720h > /tmp/kuma-dp-echo1-token

    The token should be stored in a file and then used when starting kuma-dp

    You can also pass Dataplane Token inline as KUMA_DATAPLANE_RUNTIME_TOKEN Environment Variable.

    Data Plane Proxy Token boundary

    As we can see in the example above, we can generate a token by passing a name, mesh, and a list of tags. The control plane will then verify the data plane proxy resources that are connecting to it against the token. This means we can generate a token by specifying:

    • Only mesh. By doing so we can reuse the token for all dataplanes in a given mesh.
    • mesh + tag (ex. kuma.io/service). This way we can use one token across all instances/replicas of the given service. Please keep in mind that we have to specify to include all the services that a data plane proxy is in charge of. For example, if we have a Dataplane with two inbounds, one valued with kuma.io/service: backend and one with kuma.io/service: backend-admin, we need to specify both values (--tag kuma.io/service=backend,backend-admin).
    • + name + tag (ex. kuma.io/service). This way we can use one token for one instance/replica of the given service.

    Kuma does not keep the list of issued tokens. Whenever the single token is compromised, we can add it to revocation list so it’s no longer valid.

    Every token has its own ID which is available in payload under jti key. You can extract ID from token using jwt.io or tool. Here is example of jti

    1. 0e120ec9-6b42-495d-9758-07b59fe86fb9

    Specify list of revoked IDs separated by , and store it as Secret named dataplane-token-revocations-{mesh}

    1. echo "
    2. type: Secret
    3. mesh: default
    4. name: dataplane-token-revocations-default
    5. data: " | kumactl apply --var revocations=$(echo '0e120ec9-6b42-495d-9758-07b59fe86fb9' | base64) -f -
    1. REVOCATIONS=$(echo '0e120ec9-6b42-495d-9758-07b59fe86fb9' | base64) && echo "apiVersion: v1
    2. kind: Secret
    3. metadata:
    4.   name: dataplane-token-revocations-default
    5.   namespace: kuma-system
    6. data:
    7.   value: $REVOCATIONS
    8. type: system.kuma.io/secret" | kubectl apply -f -

    Signing key rotation

    If the signing key is compromised, we must rotate it and all the tokens that was signed by it.

    1. Generate new signing key The signing key is stored as a Secret with a name that looks like dataplane-token-signing-key-{mesh}-{serialNumber}.

      Check what is the current highest serial number.

      In this case, the highest serial number is 1. Generate a new signing key with a serial number of 2

      2.    type: Secret
      3.    mesh: default
      4.    name: dataplane-token-signing-key-default-2
      5.    data: " | kumactl apply --var key=$(kumactl generate signing-key) -f -

      Check what is the current highest serial number.

      1.    kubectl get secrets -n kuma-system --field-selector='type=system.kuma.io/secret'
      2.    NAME                                 TYPE                    DATA   AGE
      3.    dataplane-token-signing-key-mesh-1   system.kuma.io/secret   1      25m

      In this case, the highest serial number is 1. Generate a new signing key with a serial number of 2

      1.    TOKEN="$(kumactl generate signing-key)" && echo "
      2.    apiVersion: v1
      3.    data:
      4.      value: $TOKEN
      5.    kind: Secret
      6.    metadata:
      7.      name: dataplane-token-signing-key-mesh-2
      8.      namespace: kuma-system
      9.    type: system.kuma.io/secret
      10.    " | kubectl apply -f -

    2. Regenerate tokens Create new data plane proxy tokens. These tokens are automatically created with the signing key that’s assigned the highest serial number, so they’re created with the new signing key. At this point, tokens signed by either new or old signing key are valid.

    3. Remove the old signing key

        All new connections to the control plane now require tokens signed with the new signing key.

      If you need to generate a new token for a Dataplane or you are using service account token projection on Kubernetes, it’s possible to configure dynamic token reloading. To enable this behaviour, set the kuma-cp configuration property dpServer.auth.useTokenPath to true. When you enable the property, kuma-dp detects changes to the token file, reloads the token and uses the new value when establishing a new connection to kuma-cp.

      Multizone

      When running in multizone, mode we can generate data plane proxy token both on global and zone control plane. If the deployment pipeline is configured to generate data plane proxy token before running the proxy, it can rely on the Zone CP. This way Global CP is not a single point of failure. Signing key rotation or token revocation should be performed on the global control plane.

      If we disable the authentication between the control plane and the data plane proxies, any data plane proxy will be able to impersonate any service, therefore this is not recommended in production.