NO MAINTENANCE NOTICE

I don’t maintain this repository anymore. Feel free to fork if needed.

ECR K8S Secret Creator

This application creates a docker config.json (as a Kubernetes secret) that can authenticate docker clients to Amazon ECR. It is using the ECR GetAuthorizationToken API to fetch the token from an Amazon Region.

A docker config.json file looks like this, which may be found in $HOME/.docker/config.json after using docker login.

{
  "auths": {
     "https://${AWS_PROFILE}.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com": {
       "auth": "....."
     }
  }
}

This application is like a running cron job that does aws ecr get-login, creates a docker config.json file, then create Kubernetes secret out of it.

WARNING!! If you need to run this in production environments, please build your own Docker image by following the How To Build this Project step.

How does it work?

• Deploy this application as a Pod in the namespace to create the Secret.

• This Pod authenticates to AWS to get a new ECR docker login token according to the -region flag.

• It then creates a config.json according to the values retrieved from AWS.

    # config.json template
    const cfgTemplate = `{
      "auths": {
       "{{ .registry }}": {
         "auth": "{{ .token }}"
       }
      }
    }`

• It then creates or updates the Secret according to the -secretName flag in the current namespace.

    apiVersion: v1
    type: Secret
    metadata:
      name: xxxx # -secretName
      namespace: xxxx # current pod namespace
    data:
      config.json: xxxxx # base64 encoded

• You can specify secret type by using -secretType flag. This can be useful, when running kubernetes nodes outside of AWS, as in this scenario kubelet does not have pull access to ECR. Specifying -secretType=kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson will automate creation of a secret, that can be used in manifests requiring imagePullSecrets

    apiVersion: v1
    data:
      .dockerconfigjson: xxxxx
    kind: Secret
    type: kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson
    metadata:
      name: xxxx
      namespace: xxxx

• It repeats the process according to the specified -interval flag. Refreshing the config.json file content in the Secret over the time specified.

• You can now use this kubernetes secret and mount it to any pod that has a docker client that authenticates to ECR.

Why did I create this?

We are using Weave Flux to operate our GitOps deployment process. The Weave Flux operator currently does not support authentication to ECR (issue #539). As a workaround, we can use the --docker-config flag and mount a custom config.json in the flux Pod (issue #1065).

The problem is ECR token expires every 12 hours, and we need to find a way to ensure that the config.json authentication token is rotated in an automated and secure way.

How to use with Weave Flux Pod?

Complete the Deployment Guide, noting the secret name and then follow Flux Guide.

How to Deploy

• IAM Role Requirement
• Deployment
• Check the ECR Secret Creator Pod’s logs
• Check the Created Secret
  • How to Build this Project

IAM Role Requirement

If you are NOT using kube2iam, skip to the Deployment Step and ensure that your Pod’s EC2 instance can authenticate to your AWS Account via AWS API Keys, or AWS EC2 IAM Role.

Create IAM Policy

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "ecr:GetAuthorizationToken",
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

aws iam create-policy --policy-name ${GET_ECR_AUTH_IAM_POLICY} --policy-document file://iam-policy.json --description "A policy that can get ECR authorization token"

Create IAM Role

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "ec2.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::${AWS_PROFILE}:role/${IAM_K8S_NODE_ROLE}"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

aws iam create-role --role-name ${GET_ECR_AUTH_IAM_ROLE} \
  --assume-role-policy-document file://ec2-iam-trust.json

Attach the IAM Policy

aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name ${GET_ECR_AUTH_IAM_ROLE} \
  --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::${AWS_PROFILE}:policy/${GET_ECR_AUTH_IAM_POLICY}

Deployment

Create the following RBAC and deploy resources yaml files and run kubectl apply -f.

---
kind: ServiceAccount
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
  namespace: ${SECRET_NAMESPACE}
---
kind: ClusterRole
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["secrets"]
  verbs: ["get", "list", "watch", "create", "update", "patch", "delete"]
---
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
  namespace: ${SECRET_NAMESPACE}

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
  namespace: ${SECRET_NAMESPACE}
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
        # if using kube2iam
        # annotations:
        # iam.amazonaws.com/role: arn:aws:iam::${AWS_PROFILE}:role/${GET_ECR_AUTH_IAM_ROLE}
    spec:
      serviceAccount: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
      containers:
        - image: bzon/ecr-k8s-secret-creator:latest
          name: ecr-k8s-secret-creator
          args:
            - "-secretName=ecr-docker-secret"
            - "-region=us-east-1"
            # the default profile is the AWS account where the kubernetes cluster is running
            # - "-profile=${AWS_ACCOUNT_ID}"
            # the default interval for fetching new ecr token is 200 seconds
            # - "-interval=300"
          resources:
            requests:
              cpu: 5m
              memory: 16Mi
            limits:
              cpu: 20m
              memory: 32Mi

Check the ECR Secret Creator Pod’s logs

{"level":"info","msg":"appVersion: 0.1.0","time":"2018-09-29T16:48:17Z"}
{"level":"info","msg":"Flags: region=us-east-1, interval=1200, profile=, secretName=ecr-docker-secret","time":"2018-09-29T16:48:17Z"}
{"level":"info","msg":"creating kubernetes secret","time":"2018-09-29T16:48:19Z"}
{"level":"info","msg":"updated kubernetes secret: ecr-docker-secret","time":"2018-09-29T16:48:19Z"}

Check the Created Secret

kubectl get secrets ecr-docker-secret -n ${SECRET_NAMESPACE} -o json | jq '.data["config.json"]' | tr -d '"' |  base64 --decode
{
  "auths": {
     "https://${AWS_PROFILE}.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com": {
       "auth": "....."
     }
  }
}

How to Build this Project

• Install Go
• Download the project go get github.com/bzon/ecr-k8s-secret-creator
• Go to $GOPATH/github.com/bzon/ecr-k8s-secret-creator
• Change the docker repository in the Makefile to your own docker repository
• Run make docker-build
• Run make push