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sandeepkd 25 minutes ago [-]
There is also a model where the applications sign the payload using the secret, AWS is a big user of that across all its API's.
neo2006 11 minutes ago [-]
This is not something we support currently. We will need to do some research on ways to support it.
The main hurdle is that we can't rewrite secrets in any of the user buffers as this will defy our threat model and signing is usually done in user space.
giladd 1 hours ago [-]
This is pretty cool, nice project. Can you expand on what threat model this combats?
Also, does the replace op happen only for specific fields in HTTP, or for every matching string in the request? I can imagine the latter if you want to support non-standard authentications methods, though there's always the edge case where the secret string placeholder is not used as a secret and should not be replaced.
neo2006 55 minutes ago [-]
The main threat model is application leaking secrets:
- Internet facing app that could potentially be hacked and bad actor exfiltrating secrets
- AI agent that can exfiltrate secrets through prompt injection for example or context poisoning
- The general use case where a secret can be for example inject by mistake in logs for instance
__turbobrew__ 4 minutes ago [-]
How does this compare with TPUs? Can you not have secrets in the TPU which cannot be accessed directly by apps, solving this threat vector? I get that you want compatibility with popular libraries, but I wonder if the actual solution is to use hardware support to enforce the secret boundaries.
boistrous 52 minutes ago [-]
we currently support rewrites for specific hosts and IPs and we have an open issue for supporting rewrite for specific headers for http/http2
neo2006 4 hours ago [-]
Hey, we're the spinning-factory team, the folks behind Kloak.
Kloak runs as a Kubernetes controller. It swaps the secrets in your workloads for harmless placeholders we call kloaked secrets, then uses eBPF to substitute the real secrets back in at the last moment — right when your app makes a request to an allowed host.
Today, Kloak works with any app using OpenSSL 3.0–3.5 (statically or dynamically linked) or go-tls (Go 1.25 and 1.26). Support for more TLS libraries (GnuTLS, BoringSSL, and others) and additional Go versions is on the roadmap.
Kloak is open source under the AGPL, contributions are welcome! We are also happy to hear any feedback and answer any question for the HN community.
For security products trust is important. writing your website copy by hand will help you build trust. If the design and content does not look human written it will lower adoption.
neo2006 25 minutes ago [-]
Thank you for the feedback! We are currently shorthanded so we relied on AI a lot for writing our docs, we reviewed that doc as much as we could but definitely there is room for improvement. We will try to get better at this.
In the mean time, if you find any discruptency with the docs or anything that we can correct please open an issue and we will get to it ASAP.
koolba 3 hours ago [-]
So it reads the packets and replaces the byte sequences at the kernel level? How does that work across packet boundaries?
neo2006 2 hours ago [-]
Secrets are detected before encryption in the user buffer but rewrites happen post encryption in the kernel buffer to be sent on the wire.
packets boundaries are not an issue because detection happen at the SSL write where we have the full secret in the buffer and its position so we can know at rewrite time that the secret is cross 2 packets and rewrite it in 2 separate operations. We also have to update the TLS session hash at the end to not corrupt the TLS frame.
subhobroto 2 hours ago [-]
This is fantastic! I need this. however, for my self-hosted home projects that are containerized but where I don't use Kubernetes, is there a way for me to use a version of Kloak that does the same eBPF magic on docker-compose or LXC/QEMU (Incus) stacks?
It's perfectly fine for you to say non-Kubernetes isn't either your focus or on your 90 day roadmap :)
NewJazz 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah you might have to go talk to incus folks on how to integrate this together.. They are fairly capable, might have some good direction.
- My specific usecase is to not need Conjur Secretless Broker (https://github.com/cyberark/secretless-broker) - my understanding of eBPF is entirely superficial but from a 30k ft view, it looks like this can not only replace it but would be a far efficient solution (Conjur would be a user-space proxy while kloak would be at lower levels of abstraction)?
neo2006 22 minutes ago [-]
yes please open an issue on https://github.com/spinningfactory/kloak/issues and we can discuss this. I'm not familiar with secretless-broker but we can definitely see if that use case fit with kloak and get into more specifics on how you can help.
neo2006 2 hours ago [-]
Thank you! We appreciate your enthusiasm! :-)
From technology perspective nothing prevent kloak to do rewrite on any workload scheduler or even without a scheduler (native Linux). The main challenge is to find a flow to signal to kloak what to rewrite and how to inject kloaked secrets to the workload.
TBH supporting other technologies is not something we thought about but we can definitely consider if there is an ask for it from the community.
subhobroto 28 minutes ago [-]
> The main challenge is to find a flow to signal to kloak what to rewrite and how to inject kloaked secrets to the workload
Would it be realistic or reasonable to detect a header like `X-kloak-ENABLED` or specific endpoints in the case of HTTP?
Similar for wire protocols like PostgreSQL or gRPC?
Our would a usermode proxy be easier but not preferred due to overhead?
neo2006 19 minutes ago [-]
The way we thought about it is from the lense of 2 personas:
- a persona that control the control plain side, what secret to distribute to which user and what hosts they are allowed to send that secret to (probably platform team or secops team)
- a persona that represent the user that need to reach host X with secret Y (probably the dev team)
based on this secret rewrite signal need to be out of band and not part of the request it self or the whole model will fall apart.
We already have the intention to support rewrites for specific headers but those headers are defined by the first persona out of band too.
btw, we support rewrite for postgres protocol for db password.
I guess we are the secrets sewers then! :D
We would love to hear what you think about it beyond the name though.
anthonyskipper 2 hours ago [-]
I think it is funny that it's sewer, because a sewer is also a underground way around things, which is a good description of the out of band solution here. So the name checks out.
neo2006 1 hours ago [-]
It was not intended! We were trying to make it sound like a cloak with a kubernetes K but I guess this explanation actually checkout better!
4 hours ago [-]
anthonyskipper 2 hours ago [-]
This is pretty awesome. Super relevant for the time because AI controlled workflows are desperate for a out of band solution like this.
The main thing I wonder is how well supported is it in cloud environements? AKS/EKS/etc?
spinningfactory 2 hours ago [-]
It should work in cloud environments, We tested it on EKS and digital ocean cloud so far, and it works. The kloak controller is deployed as privileged daemonset that have access to the underlying host and can perform eBPF attachment operations on all the pods on that host.
boistrous 1 hours ago [-]
gcp and aks were going to be the next ones on the testing list, but life sometimes gets in the way !
captn3m0 2 hours ago [-]
You should split your controller - it is running in both the control and data planes. Idea is good though, wish you luck.
neo2006 2 hours ago [-]
Thank you!
Not really, the controller is not doing dataplane per-say, it only pushes eBPF programs to the kernel for the relevant apps/cgroups so that could be considered control-plane. The full data-plane run in eBPF.
NewJazz 2 hours ago [-]
Aiui the controller is only running in the control plane, and the ebpf programs are in the data plane?
The main hurdle is that we can't rewrite secrets in any of the user buffers as this will defy our threat model and signing is usually done in user space.
Also, does the replace op happen only for specific fields in HTTP, or for every matching string in the request? I can imagine the latter if you want to support non-standard authentications methods, though there's always the edge case where the secret string placeholder is not used as a secret and should not be replaced.
For security products trust is important. writing your website copy by hand will help you build trust. If the design and content does not look human written it will lower adoption.
packets boundaries are not an issue because detection happen at the SSL write where we have the full secret in the buffer and its position so we can know at rewrite time that the secret is cross 2 packets and rewrite it in 2 separate operations. We also have to update the TLS session hash at the end to not corrupt the TLS frame.
It's perfectly fine for you to say non-Kubernetes isn't either your focus or on your 90 day roadmap :)
https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/how-to-best-ask-questi...
- What's the best way to discuss this specific topic with you? As an https://github.com/spinningfactory/kloak/issues or something else?
- My specific usecase is to not need Conjur Secretless Broker (https://github.com/cyberark/secretless-broker) - my understanding of eBPF is entirely superficial but from a 30k ft view, it looks like this can not only replace it but would be a far efficient solution (Conjur would be a user-space proxy while kloak would be at lower levels of abstraction)?
Would it be realistic or reasonable to detect a header like `X-kloak-ENABLED` or specific endpoints in the case of HTTP?
Similar for wire protocols like PostgreSQL or gRPC?
Our would a usermode proxy be easier but not preferred due to overhead?
based on this secret rewrite signal need to be out of band and not part of the request it self or the whole model will fall apart.
We already have the intention to support rewrites for specific headers but those headers are defined by the first persona out of band too.
btw, we support rewrite for postgres protocol for db password.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca_Maxima
The main thing I wonder is how well supported is it in cloud environements? AKS/EKS/etc?