Ansible is a powerful tool that can be used to manage and secure your systems. One of the ways Ansible can be used to secure your systems is by using ansible-vault. ansible-vault is a feature of the Ansible distribution that allows you to store secret keys in an easily accessible location. To use ansible-vault, you first need to install it. You can find the installation instructions on the ansible-vault website. Once you have installed ansible-vault, you can use it to create a new vault. To create a new vault, use the following command: ansible-vault create mynew Vault The resulting file will contain information about your new vault. The first line of this file will contain your name and password for your new vault. The second line of this file will contain information about your new vault. This information will include the name of your Ansible server, the path to your secret key files, and any other required information for creating and managing your new Vault. The last line of this file will contain an empty text field for you to enter a description for your new Vault. Once you have created your new Vault, you can use it to store secret keys in. To do this, use the following command: ansible-vault add key mynewKey mynewVault
With most automation, credentials are needed to authenticate and use secure resources. What has always been a challenge is how best to store those credentials securely. Ansible is an automation system that provides software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployments.
As with any automation system, Ansible needs a secure way to store secrets. In the case of Ansible, that system is called Ansible Vault. Ansible Vault provides a cross-platform solution to securely storing credentials.
Introducing Ansible Vault
Ansible Vault can be used to encrypt any file, or variables themselves, from within a playbook. By default AES is used which is a shared-secret based encryption. Both file and variable encryption methods have their benefits and drawbacks.
File Encryption
To create a new encrypted file named secrets.yml, simply use the following ansible-vault command.
After prompting for a password, the ansible-vault command will launch the default system file editor, which will result in an encrypted file upon saving.
Similarly, to encrypt a previously unencrypted file, use the following ansible-vault command. Note that this uses the encrypt parameter rather than the create parameter.
The downside to using file encryption is readability. If you open the file then you will find that without decryption, it’s impossible to decipher the contents.
Variable Encryption
Within a playbook, it is possible to use an encrypted variable by prefacing the encrypted data with the !vault tag. Running the encrypt_string argument of the ansible_vault command will result in an encrypted string that you can use within your playbooks.
After prompting you for a password, you will get the following encrypted string.
Variable encryption is great for readability, but the ability to use command line rekeying is sacrificed when using this method.
Using Ansible Vault in Practice
You may realize that using Ansible Vault in production is a challenge. To effectively use Ansible Vault, the following techniques make this process easier.
Unprompted Decryption Multiple Vaults Rekeying
Unprompted Decryption
One option to transparently decrypting a file or variable while using Ansible is to store the password within a protected and un-versioned password file. To reference this stored password, simply pass in the file location using the vault-password-file parameter.
This will decrypt any included encrypted files or variables using the included password.
It is very important not to commit your plaintext password file into your version control system. Similarly, protect this file to only the user or group that needs access to the stored password on the file system using access control lists (ACL’s).
Multiple Vaults
Although it’s convenient to have a single vault with all of the encrypted secrets, a better security practice is to separate the secure credentials into separate relevant vaults. An example of this would be separating a production and development environment. Thankfully, Ansible Vault allows us to create multiple vaults and references which vault the encrypted data is coming from using a label.
The above code will create a prod vault and prompt for your password at runtime (as noted by the @prompt string). If you already have a password file that you would like to use, simply pass in the path to the file.
Let’s say we want to encrypt the same my_secret variable, but this time store that in our prod vault. Just as before, using encrypt_string but with the relevant vault-id allows storing of the secret in the specified location.
You will notice that after the AES256 string, a new piece of text, prod is shown. This indicates the vault that the encrypted text is located in.
What if you want to include multiple vaults in a single playbook? You can easily pass in multiple vault-id declarations on an ansible-playbook command line.
Rekeying
Finally, it’s important to regularly cycle your passwords. For files that are encrypted, you can use the command line below. Passing in the new-vault-id parameter makes it easy to change the password that the secrets are encrypted with.
As noted above, command line rekeying does not work for encrypted variables. In this case, you will need to individually re-encrypt the strings and replace them in a given playbook.
Best Practices
Security is difficult, especially when it comes to using secrets within automation systems. With that in mind, below are several best practices to use when utilizing Ansible Vault. Though we have covered some of these previously, it is prudent to reiterate those practices.
ACL protected and unversioned password filesPassword files mustn’t be stored within version control systems, such as GIT. Additionally, make sure that only the appropriate users can access the password file. Separate vaultsNormally, many different environments are in use. Therefore, it is best to separate the required credentials into the appropriate vaults. Regular file and variable password rekeyingIn the case of password reuse or leaks, it is best to regularly rekey the passwords in use to limit exposure.
Conclusion
As with any automation system, it is critically important that secrets are properly protected and controlled. With Ansible Vault, that process is made easy and flexible. Using the best practices outlined above, storing and using secrets within Ansible is safe and secure.
To extend Ansible Vault even further and take this process to the next level, you can use scripts that integrate into password management solutions. As you can see, Ansible Vault is an excellent way to use secretes within Ansible playbooks.
