CyberArk Certification SECRET-SEN Reddit Questions

 The most maintenance-free way to ensure a Conjur host’s access reflects any changes made to accounts in a safe in the CyberArk vault is to grant the consumers group/role created by the Synchronizer for the Safe to the host. This means that the host will inherit the read and execute permissions on all the secrets in the Safe from the consumers group/role, and will automatically get access to any new or updated secrets in the Safe without requiring any manual intervention or policy changes. The consumers group/role is created by the Vault Conjur Synchronizer, which is a service that synchronizes secrets between the CyberArk vault and Conjur. The Synchronizer creates a policy branch for each Safe in Conjur, and assigns the consumers group/role to have read and execute permissions on all the secrets in the Safe. The Synchronizer also creates a delegation policy for each Safe, which allows the Safe admins to grant permissions to other users, hosts, groups, or layers12.

The other options are not the most maintenance-free ways to ensure a Conjur host’s access reflects any changes made to accounts in a safe in the CyberArk vault. Writing an automation script to update and load the host’s policy using PATCH/update may work, but it requires additional effort and maintenance to ensure the script is always running and up to date with the changes in the Safe. Using yami anchor [&] and wildcard (*) syntax to maintain its list of permission grants may simplify the policy writing, but it still requires manual editing and loading of the policy whenever a new secret is added or removed from the Safe. Using PVWA to add the Conjur host ID as a member of the Safe may not be possible or advisable, as the PVWA is designed for managing human users and not Conjur hosts, and it may not have the necessary integration or authorization to do so3. References: =

• Vault Conjur Synchronizer 1, Synchronizer Policy Structure
• Grant permissions on secrets 2, Grant role permissions on all secrets in a Safe
• Privileged Access Manager - Self-Hosted 3, Privileged Web Access (PVWA)

The CCP (Central Credential Provider) is a tool that enables applications to securely retrieve credentials from CyberArk Secrets Manager without hard-coding or storing them in files. The CCP can be installed on a single server or on multiple servers behind a load balancer for high availability and scalability. The load balancer is a device or service that distributes the network traffic among the CCP servers based on predefined rules and criteria.

The CCP supports multiple methods to authenticate applications, such as Allowed Machines, Client Certificate, OS User, Path, and Hash. These methods are based on registering information in the Vault with the unique application ID. For more information about the supported authentication methods, see Application authentication methods1.

When installing the CCP and configuring it for use behind a load balancer, some authentication methods may be affected by the load balancer’s behavior and settings. Specifically, the following authentication methods may be affected:

• Allowed Machines authentication: This method authenticates applications based on their IP address or hostname. If the load balancer replaces the source IP or hostname of the routed packets with its own IP or hostname, the CCP will not be able to authenticate the application that initiated the credential request. To enable the CCP to resolve the IP or hostname of the application, the load balancer needs to be configured as a transparent proxy or to attach the X-Forwarded-For header to the routed packets. For more information, see Load balance the Central Credential Provider2.
• Client Certificate authentication: This method authenticates applications based on their client certificate that is signed by a trusted certificate authority (CA). The client certificate is used to establish a secure and trusted connection between the application and the CCP. If the load balancer terminates the SSL connection before proxying the traffic to the CCP, the CCP will not be able to verify the client certificate of the application. To enable the CCP to validate the client certificate, the load balancer needs to be configured as a pass-through proxy or to forward the client certificate to the CCP. For more information, see Load balance the Central Credential Provider2.

The other authentication methods are not affected by the load balancer, as they do not rely on the IP, hostname, or certificate of the application. For example, the OS User method authenticates applications based on their Windows domain user, the Path method authenticates applications based on their URL path, and the Hash method authenticates applications based on a hash value that is generated from the application ID and a shared secret. These methods do not require any special configuration on the load balancer or the CCP.

The correct sequence of installation steps for a Credential Provider on a Linux host is as follows:

• Download the correct install package to a directory on the Linux host and decompress1.
• Copy the aimparms.sample file to /var/tmp/aimparms. Create a Credential File with an account with sufficient permissions to install. Modify the Vault.ini file to point to the correct vault2.
• Install the correct Credential Provider package for the distribution of Linux using the command: rpm -ivh CARKaim-..rpm2.
• Check that the aimprv service is running using the command: service aimprv status2.

References: 1: Download the Credential Provider 2: Install Credential Provider on Linux / AIX

 Secrets Provider and Secretless are two solutions that can minimize the Kubernetes application code changes required to adopt Conjur for secrets access. Secrets Provider is a Kubernetes Job or Deployment that runs as an init container or application container alongside the application pod. It retrieves secrets from Conjur and writes them to one or more files in a shared, mounted volume. The application can then consume the secrets from the files without any code changes, as reading local files is a common and platform-agnostic method. Secretless is a sidecar proxy that runs as a separate container in the same pod as the application. It intercepts the application’s requests to protected resources, such as databases or web services, and injects the secrets from Conjur into the requests. The application does not need to handle any secrets in its code, as Secretless handles the authentication and authorization for it. References: CyberArk Secrets Provider for Kubernetes, Secretless Broker