AWS Secrets Manager

AWS Secrets Manager can be configured in multiple ways. The current version of Kong Gateway’s implementation only supports configuring AWS Secrets Manager via environment variables.

You can further customize the vault object by configuring a vaults entity in Kong Gateway.

AWS Secrets Manager configuration

Configure the following environment variables on your Kong Gateway data plane:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<access_key_id>
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<secrets_access_key>
export AWS_REGION=<aws-region>
export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=<token>

The region used by default with references can also be specified with the following environment variable on your control plane:

export KONG_VAULT_AWS_REGION=<aws-region>

Examples

For example, let’s use an AWS Secrets Manager Secret with the name my-secret-name.

In this object, you have multiple key=value pairs.

{
  "foo": "bar",
  "snip": "snap"
}

Access these secrets from my-secret-name like this:

{vault://aws/my-secret-name/foo}
{vault://aws/my-secret-name/snip}

Configuration via vaults entity

The Vault entity can only be used once the database is initialized. Secrets for values that are used before the database is initialized can’t make use of the Vaults entity.

curl -i -X PUT http://HOSTNAME:8001/vaults/my-aws-sm-vault  \
  --data name=aws \
  --data description="Storing secrets in AWS Secrets Manager" \
  --data config.region="us-east-1"

{
    "config": {
        "region": "us-east-1"
    },
    "created_at": 1644942689,
    "description": "Storing secrets in AWS Secrets Manager",
    "id": "2911e119-ee1f-42af-a114-67061c3831e5",
    "name": "aws",
    "prefix": "my-aws-sm-vault",
    "tags": null,
    "updated_at": 1644942689
}

_format_version: "3.0"
vaults:
- config:
    region: us-east-1
  description: Storing secrets in AWS Secrets Manager
  name: aws
  prefix: my-aws-sm-vault

With the Vault entity in place, you can now reference the secrets. This allows you to drop the AWS_REGION environment variable.

{vault://my-aws-sm-vault/my-secret-name/foo}
{vault://my-aws-sm-vault/my-secret-name/snip}

Secrets in different regions

You can create multiple entities, which lets you have secrets in different regions:

curl -X PUT http://HOSTNAME:8001/vaults/aws-eu-central-vault -d name=aws -d config.region="eu-central-1"
curl -X PUT http://HOSTNAME:8001/vaults/aws-us-west-vault -d name=aws -d config.region="us-west-1"

This lets you source secrets from different regions:

{vault://aws-eu-central-vault/my-secret-name/foo}
{vault://aws-us-west-vault/my-secret-name/snip}

Vault configuration options

Use the following configuration options to configure the vaults entity through any of the supported tools:

• Admin API
• Declarative configuration
• Kong Manager
• Konnect

Configuration options for an AWS Secrets Manager vault in Kong Gateway:

Common options: