Configure mTLS between the Gateway and Kuadrant components¶
Overview¶
This guide includes manual steps to enable mTLS between an Istio provided gateway and the Kuadrant components. If you use an AuthPolicy or RateLimitPolicy, there will be communication between the gateway and the respective Kuadrant components at request time. This communication happens between the Wasm plugin in Envoy proxy, and Authorino or Limitador. At the time of writing there is an RFC discussing how to add mTLS capabilities as a feature of the Kuadrant operator. If you are interested in having that feature or influencing how it is delivered, please engage on that pull request.
Note
This method currently only works if the Gateway is provided by Istio, with service mesh capabilities enabled across the cluster. For example, the Istio CNI agent is running on each node.
Prerequisites¶
- You have installed Kuadrant in a Kubernetes cluster.
- Additionally, you have at least 1 AuthPolicy or RateLimitPolicy attached to your Gateway or HTTPRoute.
Enabling mTLS¶
Kuadrant components¶
As the Kuadrant components (Authorino & Limitador) are already part of the service mesh in Istio, mTLS can be enabled after an Envoy proxy sidecar is deployed alongside them. To do this, apply the Istio sidecar label to both Deployment templates.
kubectl -n kuadrant-system patch deployment authorino \
-p '{"spec":{"template":{"metadata":{"labels":{"sidecar.istio.io/inject":"true"}}}}}'
kubectl -n kuadrant-system patch deployment limitador-limitador \
-p '{"spec":{"template":{"metadata":{"labels":{"sidecar.istio.io/inject":"true"}}}}}'
You should see the number of containers in either pod increase from 1 to 2, as the istio-proxy is added to the pods. This change will force all traffic to those pods to go through the proxy. However, mTLS is not enabled yet.
Envoy Filter¶
The next step enables mTLS for traffic originating in the gateway (where the Wasm plugin executes), going to the Kuadrant components. This requires modifying the EnvoyFilters directly.
Note
Any changes to the EnvoyFilters may be reverted by the Kuadrant operator when related resources like Gateways, HTTPRoutes or policies are modified. It is recommended to automate the next step, for example via a job or GitOps controller, to ensure the changes persist.
The EnvoyFilter resources will typically have a name prefix of kuadrant- in the same namespace as your Gateway.
Add the snippet below to the spec.configPatches[].patch.value value in each EnvoyFilter.
transport_socket:
name: envoy.transport_sockets.tls
typed_config:
'@type': type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.transport_sockets.tls.v3.UpstreamTlsContext
common_tls_context:
tls_certificate_sds_secret_configs:
- name: default
sds_config:
api_config_source:
api_type: GRPC
grpc_services:
- envoy_grpc:
cluster_name: sds-grpc
validation_context_sds_secret_config:
name: ROOTCA
sds_config:
api_config_source:
api_type: GRPC
grpc_services:
- envoy_grpc:
cluster_name: sds-grpc
The envoy.transport_sockets.tls transport socket name tells Envoy to use the built-in TLS transport socket, enabling TLS encryption.
The @type specifies that the configuration follows the UpstreamTlsContext message from Envoy's TLS transport socket extension. This is used for client-side TLS settings.
The tls_certificate_sds_secret_configs configures Envoy to obtain client certificates and private keys via the Secret Discovery Service (SDS) over GRPC.
The validation_context_sds_secret_config configures Envoy to obtain the root CA certificates via SDS (over GRPC) to validate the server's certificate.
Istio configuration¶
The last step is to ensure Authorino and Limitador are configured to require and accept mTLS connections.
In Istio, this is done by creating a PeerAuthentication resource where the mtls mode is set to STRICT.
The below command will enable STRICT mode on all pods with Istio sidecar injection in the kuadrant-system namespace.
kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1
kind: PeerAuthentication
metadata:
name: default
namespace: kuadrant-system
spec:
mtls:
mode: STRICT
EOF
If you prefer to only enable mTLS for a specific component, you can modify just the EnvoyFilter and Deployment for that component.
Then, when creating the PeerAuthentication resource, you can be more specific about what pods the mTLS mode apply to. For example, the following resource would enable STRICT mode just for the Limitador component.
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1
kind: PeerAuthentication
metadata:
name: limitador-mtls
namespace: kuadrant-system
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: limitador
mtls:
mode: STRICT
Disabling mTLS¶
To disable mTLS, remove the transport_socket changes from any EnvoyFilters.
Then you can either set the mTLS mode to PERMISSIVE in the PeerAuthentication resource:
kubectl patch peerauthentication default -n kuadrant-system --type='merge' -p '{"spec":{"mtls":{"mode":"PERMISSIVE"}}}'
Or delete the resource:
You don't have to remove the sidecar from the Kuadrant components, but it is safe to do so by removing the sidecar.istio.io/inject label:
kubectl -n kuadrant-system patch deployment authorino \
--type='json' \
-p='[{"op": "remove", "path": "/spec/template/metadata/labels/sidecar.istio.io~1inject"}]'
kubectl -n kuadrant-system patch deployment limitador-limitador \
--type='json' \
-p='[{"op": "remove", "path": "/spec/template/metadata/labels/sidecar.istio.io~1inject"}]'
Or set the value to false: