secrethor

README

Secrethor

Secrethor is a Kubernetes Operator designed to enforce and automate security best practices for secrets management across your Kubernetes clusters. It provides a robust framework for implementing security policies, ensuring compliance, and maintaining operational control over sensitive credentials.

🚀 Key Features

• Real-time Policy Enforcement

  • Admission webhook for immediate validation of secret creation/updates
  • Declarative policy definitions using Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)
  • Comprehensive secret validation rules

• Policy Management

  • Namespace-based access control (allowedNamespaces)
  • Secret lifecycle management (maxAgeDays)
  • Type restrictions (allowedTypes)
  • Key-level validation (requiredKeys, forbiddenKeys)
  • Advanced content validation (valueConstraints)

• Security & Compliance

  • Built-in support for common compliance frameworks
  • Automated secret rotation capabilities
  • Audit logging and monitoring integration

📋 Prerequisites

• Kubernetes cluster (v1.11.3+)
• Go (v1.22.0+)
• Docker (17.03+)
• kubectl (v1.11.3+)
• cert-manager (installed on cluster)

🛠 Installation

Using Helm (Recommended)

It enables teams to define SecretPolicy CRDs that validate how and where Kubernetes Secrets are created — ensuring governance, compliance, and operational control over sensitive credentials.

Step 1: Install without the webhook

helm repo add secrethor https://miltlima.github.io/secrethor 

helm install secrethor secrethor/secrethor \
  --namespace secrethor-system \
  --create-namespace \
  --set webhook.enabled=false

Step 2: Enable webhook once pods/services are ready

helm upgrade secrethor secrethor/secrethor \
  --namespace secrethor-system \
  --set webhook.enabled=true

Optional: Create namespace via Helm

namespace:
  create: true

Uninstall

helm uninstall secrethor --namespace secrethor-system
kubectl delete validatingwebhookconfiguration secrets.secrethor.dev --ignore-not-found

Manual Installation

# Deploy the operator
make deploy IMG=docker.io/bonovoo/secrethor:latest

# Verify installation
kubectl get pods -n secrethor-system

📝 Configuration

Example SecretPolicy

apiVersion: secrets.secrethor.dev/v1alpha1
kind: SecretPolicy
metadata:
  name: production-policy
spec:
  allowedNamespaces:
    - production
    - staging
  maxAgeDays: 30
  allowedTypes:
    - Opaque
    - kubernetes.io/basic-auth
    - kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson
  requiredKeys:
    - username
    - password
  forbiddenKeys:
    - token
    - privateKey
  valueConstraints:
    password:
      minLength: 12
      mustContain:
        - upper
        - lower
        - number
        - special
    username:
      minLength: 4
      regex: "^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+$"

Policy Configuration Guide

Namespace Management

• allowedNamespaces: List of namespaces where secrets can be created
• Use cases:
  • Prevent secrets in untrusted namespaces
  • Enforce namespace-based access control
  • Support multi-tenant environments

Secret Lifecycle

• maxAgeDays: Maximum age of secrets before rotation
• Benefits:
  • Automated secret rotation ( to be implemented)
  • Reduced risk of long-lived credentials
  • Compliance with security standards

Content Validation

• valueConstraints: Define rules for secret values

• Supported validations:

  • Minimum length requirements
  • Character type requirements
  • Custom regex patterns
  • Forbidden patterns

• Prevents sensitive secrets from being created in non-secure namespaces

• Encourages security best practices and namespace segmentation

• Helps ensure compliance with standards like PCI, SOC2, ISO, GDPR

If a Secret is created in a namespace not listed in allowedNamespaces, Secrethor will deny the request.

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🗺 Roadmap

Current Development

• Expired secrets detection
• Unused secret detection
• Secret rotation automation
• Enhanced monitoring capabilities

Planned Features

• OLM/OperatorHub support
• Additional secret store integrations
• Advanced compliance reporting

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community! Here's how you can help:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Please read our Contributing Guidelines for more details.

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🪪 License

Apache License - see LICENSE file for details.

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Built with ❤️ by Milton Lima de Jesus