Chapter 11. Configuring TLS encryption in Eventing
With the transport encryption feature, you can transport data and events over secured and encrypted HTTPS connections by using Transport Layer Security (TLS).
OpenShift Serverless transport encryption for Eventing is a Technology Preview feature only. Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete. Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.
For more information about the support scope of Red Hat Technology Preview features, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.
The transport-encryption
feature flag is an enum
configuration that defines how Addressables, such as Broker, Channel, and Sink, accept events. It controls whether Addressables must accept events over HTTP or HTTPS based on the selected setting.
The possible values for transport-encryption
are as follows:
Value | Description |
---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.1. Creating a SelfSigned ClusterIssuer resource for Eventing
ClusterIssuers
are Kubernetes resources that represent certificate authorities (CAs) that can generate signed certificates by honoring certificate signing requests. All cert-manager certificates require a referenced issuer in a ready condition to attempt to honor the request. For more details, see Issuer.
For simplicity, this procedure uses a SelfSigned
issuer as the root certificate authority. For more details about SelfSigned
issuer implications and limitations, see SelfSigned issuers. If you are using a custom public key infrastructure (PKI), you must configure it so its privately signed CA certificates are recognized across the cluster. For more details about cert-manager, see certificate authorities (CAs). You can use any other issuer that is usable for cluster-local services.
Prerequisites
- You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
- You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator.
- You have installed the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
-
You have installed the OpenShift (
oc
) CLI.
Procedure
Create a
SelfSigned
ClusterIssuer
resource as follows:apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1 kind: ClusterIssuer metadata: name: knative-eventing-selfsigned-issuer spec: selfSigned: {}
Apply the
ClusterIssuer
resource by running the following command:$ oc apply -f <filename>
Create a root certificate by using the
SelfSigned
ClusterIssuer
resource as follows:apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1 kind: Certificate metadata: name: knative-eventing-selfsigned-ca namespace: cert-manager 1 spec: secretName: knative-eventing-ca 2 isCA: true commonName: selfsigned-ca privateKey: algorithm: ECDSA size: 256 issuerRef: name: knative-eventing-selfsigned-issuer kind: ClusterIssuer group: cert-manager.io
Apply the
Certificate
resource by running the following:$ oc apply -f <filename>
11.2. Creating a ClusterIssuer resource for Eventing
ClusterIssuers
are Kubernetes resources that represent certificate authorities (CAs) that can generate signed certificates by honoring certificate signing requests.
Prerequisites
- You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
- You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator.
- You have installed the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
-
You have installed the OpenShift (
oc
) CLI.
Procedure
Create the
knative-eventing-ca-issuer
ClusterIssuer
resource as follows:Every Eventing component uses this issuer to issue their server’s certs.
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1 kind: ClusterIssuer metadata: name: knative-eventing-ca-issuer spec: ca: secretName: knative-eventing-ca 1
- 1
- The
secretName
value in thecert-manager
namespace (default for cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift) contains the certificate that can be used by Knative Eventing components.
NoteThe
ClusterIssuer
name must beknative-eventing-ca-issuer
.Apply the
ClusterIssuer
resource by running the following command:$ oc apply -f <filename>
11.3. Enabling transport encrption for Knative Eventing
You can enable transport encryption in KnativeEventing
by setting the transport-encryption
feature to strict
.
Prerequisites
- You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
- You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator.
- You have installed the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
-
You have installed the OpenShift (
oc
) CLI.
Procedure
Enable the
transport-encryption
inKnativeEventing
as follows:apiVersion: operator.knative.dev/v1beta1 kind: KnativeEventing metadata: name: knative-eventing namespace: knative-eventing spec: # Other spec fields omitted ... # ... config: features: transport-encryption: strict
Apply the
KnativeEventing
resource by running the following command:$ oc apply -f <filename>
11.4. Configuring additional CA trust bundles
By default, Eventing clients trust the OpenShift CA bundle configured for custom PKI. For more details, see Configuring a custom PKI.
When a new connection is established, Eventing clients automatically include these CA bundles in their trusted list.
Prerequisites
- You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
- You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator.
- You have installed the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
Procedure
Create a CA bundle for Eventing as follows:
kind: ConfigMap metadata: name: <my_org_eventing_bundle> 1 namespace: knative-eventing labels: networking.knative.dev/trust-bundle: "true" data: 2 ca.crt: ... ca1.crt: ... tls.crt: ...
11.5. Configure custom event sources to trust the Eventing CA
To create a custom event source, use a SinkBinding. The SinkBinding can inject the configured CA trust bundles as a projected volume into each container by using the knative-custom-certs
directory.
In specific cases, you might inject company-specific CA trust bundles into base container images and automatically configure runtimes, such as OpenJDK or Node.js, and so on. to trust those CA bundles. In such cases, you might not need to configure your clients.
By using the my_org_eventing_bundle
config map from the previous example, with the ca.crt
, ca1.crt
, and tls.crt
data keys, the knative-custom-certs
directory has the following layout:
/knative-custom-certs/ca.crt /knative-custom-certs/ca1.crt /knative-custom-certs/tls.crt
You can use these files to add CA trust bundles to HTTP clients that send events to Eventing.
Depending on the runtime, programming language, or library you use, different methods exist for configuring custom CA cert files, such as using command-line flags, environment variables, or reading the content of the files.
11.6. Adding a SelfSigned ClusterIssuer resource to CA trust bundles
If you are using a SelfSigned
ClusterIssuer
resource, you can add the CA to the Eventing CA trust bundles.
Prerequisites
- You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
- You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator.
- You have installed the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
-
You have installed the OpenShift (
oc
) CLI.
Procedure
Export the CA from the
knative-eventing-ca
secret in the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift namespace (default iscert-manager
certificate) by running the following command:$ oc get secret -n cert-manager knative-eventing-ca -o=jsonpath='{.data.ca\.crt}' | base64 -d > ca.crt
Create a CA trust bundle in the
knative-eventing
namespace by running the following command:$ oc create configmap -n knative-eventing my-org-selfsigned-ca-bundle --from-file=ca.crt
Label the
ConfigMap
by running the following command:$ oc label configmap -n knative-eventing my-org-selfsigned-ca-bundle networking.knative.dev/trust-bundle=true
11.7. Ensuring seamless CA rotation
Ensuring seamless CA rotation is essential to avoid service downtime or to handle emergencies.
Prerequisites
- You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
- You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator.
- You have installed the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
-
You have installed the OpenShift (
oc
) CLI.
Procedure
- Create a CA certificate.
Add the public key of the new CA certificate to the CA trust bundles.
Ensure that you also keep the public key of the existing CA.
Ensure all clients use the latest CA trust bundles.
Knative Eventing components automatically reload the updated CA trust bundles. For custom workloads that consume trust bundles, reload or restart them as needed.
-
Update the
knative-eventing-ca-issuer
ClusterIssuer
to reference the secret containing the CA certificate that you created in step 1. Force
cert-manager
to renew certificates in theknative-eventing namespace
.For more information about
cert-manager
, see Reissuance triggered by user actions.- As soon as the CA rotation is fully completed, remove the public key of the old CA from the trust bundle config map.
11.8. Verifying transport encryption in Eventing
To confirm that transport encryption is correctly configured, you can create and test an InMemoryChannel
resource. Follow the steps to ensure that it uses HTTPS as expected.
Prerequisites
- You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
- You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator.
- You have installed the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift.
-
You have installed the OpenShift (
oc
) CLI.
Procedure
Create an
InMemoryChannel
resource as follows:apiVersion: messaging.knative.dev/v1 kind: InMemoryChannel metadata: name: transport-encryption-test
Apply the
InMemoryChannel
resource by running the following command:$ oc apply -f <filename>
View the
InMemoryChannel
address by running the following command:$ oc get inmemorychannels.messaging.knative.dev transport-encryption-test
Example output
NAME URL AGE READY REASON transport-encryption-test https://imc-dispatcher.knative-eventing.svc.cluster.local/default/transport-encryption-test 17s True