The cert-manager external issuer for Keyfactor EJBCA can be used to issue certificates from Keyfactor EJBCA using cert-manager.
The ejbca-cert-manager-issuer can authenticate to EJBCA using mTLS (client certificate & key) or the OAuth 2.0 "client credentials" token flow (sometimes called two-legged OAuth 2.0).
The credential must be configured using a Kubernetes Secret. By default, the secret is expected to exist in the same namespace as the issuer controller (ejbca-issuer-system
by default). This can be overridden by deploying the chart using the --set "secretConfig.useClusterRoleForSecretAccess=true"
flag.
If the EJBCA API is configured to use a self-signed certificate or with a certificate that isn't publically trusted, the CA certificate must be provided as a Kubernetes secret.
kubectl -n ejbca-issuer-system create secret generic ejbca-ca-secret --from-file=ca.crt
Create a K8s TLS secret containing the client certificate and key to authenticate with EJBCA:
kubectl -n ejbca-issuer-system create secret tls ejbca-secret --cert=client.crt --key=client.key
Create an Opaque secret containing the client ID and client secret to authenticate with EJBCA:
token_url="<token url>"
client_id="<client id>"
client_secret="<client secret>"
audience="<audience>"
scopes="<scopes>"
kubectl -n ejbca-issuer-system create secret generic ejbca-secret \
"--from-literal=tokenUrl=$token_url" \
"--from-literal=clientId=$client_id" \
"--from-literal=clientSecret=$client_secret" \
"--from-literal=audience=$audience" \
"--from-literal=scopes=$scopes"
Audience and Scopes are optional
The ejbca-issuer.keyfactor.com/v1alpha1
API version supports Issuer and ClusterIssuer resources.
The ejbca controller will automatically detect and process resources of both types.
The Issuer resource is namespaced, while the ClusterIssuer resource is cluster-scoped. For example, ClusterIssuer resources can be used to issue certificates for resources in multiple namespaces, whereas Issuer resources can only be used to issue certificates for resources in the same namespace.
The spec
field of both the Issuer and ClusterIssuer resources use the following fields:
hostname
- The hostname of the EJBCA instanceejbcaSecretName
- The name of the Kubernetes secret containing the client certificate and key or OAuth 2.0 credentials.certificateAuthorityName
- The name of the EJBCA certificate authority to use. For example,ManagementCA
certificateProfileName
- The name of the EJBCA certificate profile to use. For example,ENDUSER
endEntityProfileName
- The name of the EJBCA end entity profile to use. For example,istio
caBundleSecretName
- The name of the Kubernetes secret containing the CA certificate. This field is optional and only required if the EJBCA API is configured to use a self-signed certificate or with a certificate signed by an untrusted root.endEntityName
- The name of the end entity to use. This field is optional. More information on how the field is used can be found in the EJBCA End Entity Name Configuration section.
If a different combination of hostname/certificate authority/certificate profile/end entity profile is required, a new Issuer or ClusterIssuer resource must be created. Each resource instantiation represents a single configuration.
The following is an example of an Issuer resource:
apiVersion: ejbca-issuer.keyfactor.com/v1alpha1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: issuer
app.kubernetes.io/instance: issuer-sample
app.kubernetes.io/part-of: ejbca-issuer
app.kubernetes.io/created-by: ejbca-issuer
name: issuer-sample
spec:
hostname: ""
certificateAuthorityName: ""
certificateProfileName: ""
endEntityProfileName: ""
caBundleSecretName: ""
endEntityName: ""
The following is an example of a ClusterIssuer resource:
apiVersion: ejbca-issuer.keyfactor.com/v1alpha1
kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: clusterissuer
app.kubernetes.io/instance: clusterissuer-sample
app.kubernetes.io/part-of: ejbca-issuer
app.kubernetes.io/created-by: ejbca-issuer
name: clusterissuer-sample
spec:
hostname: ""
ejbcaBundleSecretName: ""
certificateAuthorityName: ""
certificateProfileName: ""
endEntityProfileName: ""
caBundleSecretName: ""
endEntityName: ""
To create new resources from the above examples, replace the empty strings with the appropriate values and apply the resources to the cluster:
kubectl -n ejbca-issuer-system apply -f issuer.yaml
kubectl -n ejbca-issuer-system apply -f clusterissuer.yaml
To verify that Issuer and ClusterIssuer resources were created successfully, run the following commands:
kubectl -n ejbca-issuer-system get issuers.ejbca-issuer.keyfactor.com
kubectl -n ejbca-issuer-system get clusterissuers.ejbca-issuer.keyfactor.com
Once the Issuer and ClusterIssuer resources are created, they can be used to issue certificates using cert-manager.
The two most important concepts are Certificate
and CertificateRequest
resources. Certificate
resources represent a single X.509 certificate and its associated attributes, and automatically renews the certificate
and keeps it up to date. When Certificate
resources are created, they create CertificateRequest
resources, which
use an Issuer or ClusterIssuer to actually issue the certificate.
To learn more about cert-manager, see the cert-manager documentation.
The following is an example of a Certificate resource. This resource will create a corresponding CertificateRequest resource,
and will use the issuer-sample
Issuer resource to issue the certificate. Once issued, the certificate will be stored in a
Kubernetes secret named ejbca-certificate
.
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
name: ejbca-certificate
spec:
commonName: ejbca-issuer-sample
secretName: ejbca-certificate
issuerRef:
name: issuer-sample
group: ejbca-issuer.keyfactor.com
kind: Issuer
Certificate resources support many more fields than the above example. See the Certificate resource documentation for more information.
Similarly, a CertificateRequest resource can be created directly. The following is an example of a CertificateRequest resource.
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: CertificateRequest
metadata:
name: ejbca-certificate
spec:
request: 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
issuerRef:
name: issuer-sample
group: ejbca-issuer.keyfactor.com
kind: Issuer
Unless the cert-manager internal approver automatically approves the request, newly created CertificateRequest resources
will be in a Pending
state until they are approved. CertificateRequest resources can be approved manually by using
cmctl. The following is an example
of approving a CertificateRequest resource named ejbca-certificate
in the ejbca-issuer-system
namespace.
cmctl -n ejbca-issuer-system approve ejbca-certificate
Once a certificate request has been approved, the certificate will be issued and stored in the secret specified in the CertificateRequest resource. The following is an example of retrieving the certificate from the secret.
kubectl get secret ejbca-certificate -n ejbca-issuer-system -o jsonpath='{.data.tls\.crt}' | base64 -d