Prerequisites

• Akeyless Gateway v3.40.0 or later
• An Authentication Method attached to a role with Read permission for Items
• Certificate Item stored in Akeyless Platform containing the certificate and private_key in pem format.

Authentication

The following Authentication Methods are supported:

• API Key
• AWS IAM
• Azure
• GCP
• K8S

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Note

In this guide, we will use an API Key Authentication Method for simplicity

Create a new API Key Authentication Method using the CLI:

akeyless create-auth-method --name /Dev/Spire-Auth

Create an Access Role:

akeyless create-role --name /Dev/Spire-Role

Associate your API Key Authentication Method to the Access Role that was created:

akeyless assoc-role-am --role-name /Dev/Spire-Role \
--am-name /Dev/Spire-Auth

Set Read permission for Secret & Keys for the Access Role:

akeyless set-role-rule --role-name /Dev/Spire-Role \
--path /SPIRE/SVID/'*' \
--capability read

Configuration

Run the following command to download and unpack pre-built spire-server and spire-agent executable and example configuration files in a spire-1.7.0 directory:

curl -s -N -L https://github.com/spiffe/spire/releases/download/v1.7.0/spire-1.7.0-linux-amd64-glibc.tar.gz | tar xz

Next, run the following command in order to create the certificate item in Akeyless:

akeyless create-certificate \
--name </SPIRE/SVID/certificate_name> \
--certificate <Path/To/certificate.pem> \
--private-key <Path/To/private_Key.pem>

Use the following command to download the AkeylessUpstreamAuthority SM plugin:

curl -o AkeylessUpstreamAuthority-sm  https://download.akeyless.io/Akeyless_Artifacts/Linux/spire/plugin/server/spire-upstream-sm-amd64-linux-v0.0.1

Change the file permissions so it will be executable:

chmod +x AkeylessUpstreamAuthority-sm

Validate the SHA256 CHECKSUM:

sha256sum AkeylessUpstreamAuthority-sm

The sha256sum command generates a unique, fixed-size hash value (256 bits) for the binary file, ensuring that data remains unchanged.

Server configuration

Edit the UpstreamAuthority Plugin as follows in spire-1.7.0/conf/server/server.conf file.

UpstreamAuthority  "akeyless_sm" {
     plugin_cmd = "/path/to/plugin_cmd"
     plugin_checksum = "sha256 of the plugin binary"
     plugin_data {
       access_id = "<Your_Access_ID>"
       access_key = "<Your_Access_KEY>"
       akeyless_gateway_url = "https://<Your-Akeyless-GW-URL:8081>"
       certificate_name = "</SPIRE/SVID/certificate_name>"
     }
}

Where:

• plugin_cmd - The location of the binary file that was created.

• plugin_checksum - sha256 of the binary.

• access_id - The Auth Method Access-ID

• access_key - Optional, The AccessKey. Relevant only for API Key.

• akeyless_gateway_url - Akeyless Gateway URL, v2 API, default port 8081

• certificate_name - The certificate item that was created earlier in Akeyless. In our example /SPIRE/SVID/certificate_name

For K8s, GCP or AzureAD Auth methods set the following settings as well:

• k8s_auth_config_name - K8s Auth Config name as created under your Gateway

• gcp_audience - The audience to verify the JWT received by the client. By default, akeyless.io

• azure_object_id - Optional for Azure, objectID

SPIRE Server Initialization

In order to initialize the server, run the following command:

bin/spire-server run -config conf/server/server.conf &

Once the server is running, the Agent needs to be configured as well, add the following line to the conf/agent/agent.conf file in the agent section in order to set the path to the SPIRE server CA bundle:

trust_bundle_path = "/Path/To/certificate/file" 

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Info

trust bundle

The "/Path/To/certificate.pem" is a path on your machine where a certificate.pem file will be exist and the value of the file will be the value of the certificate that was created earlier in Akeyless.

Run the following command in order to generate a token that will be used to attest the agent to the server

bin/spire-server token generate -spiffeID spiffe://example.org/myagent

SPIRE Agent Initialization

Use the token that was generated in order to attest the agent to the server

bin/spire-agent run -config conf/agent/agent.conf -joinToken <token_string> &

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Info

SPIFFE/SPIRE

For the full configuration steps, visit the official Quickstart for Linux and MacOS X guide