Vault-Associate Exam Results

The transit secrets engine relieves the burden of proper encryption/decryption from application developers and pushes the burden onto the operators of Vault. The transit secrets engine provides encryption as a service, which means that it performs cryptographic operations on data in-transit without storing any data. This allows developers to delegate the responsibility of managing encryption keys and algorithms to Vault operators, who can define and enforce policies on the transit secrets engine. This way, developers can focus on their application logic and data, while Vault handles the encryption and decryption of data in a secure and scalable manner. References: Transit - Secrets Engines | Vault | HashiCorp Developer, Encryption as a service: transit secrets engine | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

This policy would allow read permissions for all secrets at path secret/bar, as well as list permissions for the secret/bar/ path. The list permission is required to be able to see the names of the secrets under a given path1. The wildcard () character matches any number of characters within a single path segment, while the slash (/) character matches the end of the path2. Therefore, the policy would grant read access to any secret that starts with secret/bar/, such as secret/bar/foo or secret/bar/baz, but not to secret/bar itself. To grant list access to secret/bar, the policy needs to specify the exact path with a slash at the end. This policy follows the principle of least privilege, which means that it only grants the minimum permissions necessary for the users to perform their tasks3.

The other options are not correct because they either grant too much or too little permissions. Option A would grant both read and list permissions to all secrets under secret/bar, which is more than what is required. Option B would grant list permissions to all secrets under secret/bar, but only read permissions to secret/bar itself, which is not what is required. Option D would use an invalid character (+) in the policy, which would cause an error.

References:

• Policy Syntax | Vault | HashiCorp Developer
• Policy Syntax | Vault | HashiCorp Developer
• Policies | Vault | HashiCorp Developer

Shamir’s Secret Sharing is a cryptographic algorithm that allows a secret to be split into multiple parts, called key shares, such that a certain number of key shares are required to reconstruct the secret. The number of key shares and the threshold number are configurable parameters that depend on the desired level of security and availability. Vault uses Shamir’s Secret Sharing to protect its master key, which is used to encrypt and decrypt the data encryption key that secures the Vault data. When Vault is initialized, it generates a master key and splits it into a configured number of key shares, which are then distributed to trusted operators. To unseal Vault, the threshold number of key shares must be provided to reconstruct the master key and decrypt the data encryption key. This process ensures that no single operator can access the Vault data without the cooperation of other key holders. References: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/concepts/seal 4, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/commands/operator/init 5, https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/commands/operator/unseal 6

The policy shown in the image is:

path “secret/data/webapp1” { capabilities = [“create”, “read”, “update”, “delete”, “list”] }

path “secret/data/super-secret” { capabilities = [“deny”] }

This policy grants or denies access to the key/value v2 secrets engine mounted at secret/ according to the following rules:

• The path “secret/data/webapp1” has the capabilities of “create”, “read”, “update”, “delete”, and “list”. This means that the policy allows performing any of these operations on the secrets stored under this path. The data/ prefix is used to access the actual secret data in the key/value v2 secrets engine5. Therefore, the policy permits the operation of vault kv get secret/webapp1, which reads the secret data at secret/data/webapp16.
• The path “secret/data/super-secret” has the capability of “deny”. This means that the policy denies performing any operation on the secrets stored under this path. The policy overrides any other policy that might grant access to this path. Therefore, the policy does not permit the operations of vault kv delete secret/super-secret and vault kv list secret/super-secret, which delete and list the secret data at secret/data/super-secret respectively6.
• The policy does not explicitly define any rules for the path “secret/metadata”. The metadata/ prefix is used to access the metadata of the secrets in the key/value v2 secrets engine, such as the number of versions, the deletion status, the creation time, etc5. By default, if the policy grants any of the capabilities of “create”, “read”, “update”, or “delete” on the data/ path, it also grants the same capabilities on the corresponding metadata/ path7. Therefore, the policy permits the operation of vault kv metadata get secret/webapp1, which reads the metadata of the secret at secret/metadata/webapp18.

References: 5(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/secrets/kv/kv-v2), [ 6]6, 7(https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/docs/secrets/kv/kv-v2), [ 8]8