Mutual TLS: External Clients to the Gateway

  3 minute read  

This task demonstrates how mutual TLS can be achieved between external clients and the Gateway. This task uses a self-signed CA, so it should be used for testing and demonstration purposes only.

Prerequisites

  • OpenSSL to generate TLS assets.

Installation

Follow the steps from the Quickstart task to install Envoy Gateway and the example manifest. Before proceeding, you should be able to query the example backend using HTTP.

Verify the Gateway status:

kubectl get gateway/eg -o yaml

egctl x status gateway -v

TLS Certificates

Generate the certificates and keys used by the Gateway to terminate client TLS connections.

Create a root certificate and private key to sign certificates:

openssl req -x509 -sha256 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -subj '/O=example Inc./CN=example.com' -keyout example.com.key -out example.com.crt

Create a certificate and a private key for www.example.com:

openssl req -out www.example.com.csr -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout www.example.com.key -subj "/CN=www.example.com/O=example organization"
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -CA example.com.crt -CAkey example.com.key -set_serial 0 -in www.example.com.csr -out www.example.com.crt

Store the cert/key in a Secret:

kubectl create secret tls example-cert --key=www.example.com.key --cert=www.example.com.crt --certificate-authority=example.com.crt

Store the CA Cert in another Secret:

kubectl create secret generic example-ca-cert --from-file=ca.crt=example.com.crt

Create a certificate and a private key for the client client.example.com:

openssl req -out client.example.com.csr -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout client.example.com.key -subj "/CN=client.example.com/O=example organization"
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -CA example.com.crt -CAkey example.com.key -set_serial 0 -in client.example.com.csr -out client.example.com.crt

Update the Gateway from the Quickstart to include an HTTPS listener that listens on port 443 and references the example-cert Secret:

kubectl patch gateway eg --type=json --patch '
  - op: add
    path: /spec/listeners/-
    value:
      name: https
      protocol: HTTPS
      port: 443
      tls:
        mode: Terminate
        certificateRefs:
          - kind: Secret
            group: ""
            name: example-cert
  '

Verify the Gateway status:

kubectl get gateway/eg -o yaml

Create a ClientTrafficPolicy to enforce client validation using the CA Certificate as a trusted anchor.

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: gateway.envoyproxy.io/v1alpha1
kind: ClientTrafficPolicy
metadata:
  name: enable-mtls
  namespace: default
spec:
  targetRefs:
  - group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
    kind: Gateway
    name: eg
  tls:
    clientValidation:
      caCertificateRefs:
      - kind: "Secret"
        group: ""
        name: "example-ca-cert"
EOF

Save and apply the following resource to your cluster:

---
apiVersion: gateway.envoyproxy.io/v1alpha1
kind: ClientTrafficPolicy
metadata:
  name: enable-mtls
  namespace: default
spec:
  targetRefs:
  - group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
    kind: Gateway
    name: eg
  tls:
    clientValidation:
      caCertificateRefs:
      - kind: "Secret"
        group: ""
        name: "example-ca-cert"

Testing

Get the External IP of the Gateway:

export GATEWAY_HOST=$(kubectl get gateway/eg -o jsonpath='{.status.addresses[0].value}')

Query the example app through the Gateway:

curl -v -HHost:www.example.com --resolve "www.example.com:443:${GATEWAY_HOST}" \
--cert client.example.com.crt --key client.example.com.key \
--cacert example.com.crt https://www.example.com/get

Don’t specify the client key and certificate in the above command, and ensure that the connection fails:

curl -v -HHost:www.example.com --resolve "www.example.com:443:${GATEWAY_HOST}" \
--cacert example.com.crt https://www.example.com/get

Get the name of the Envoy service created the by the example Gateway:

export ENVOY_SERVICE=$(kubectl get svc -n envoy-gateway-system --selector=gateway.envoyproxy.io/owning-gateway-namespace=default,gateway.envoyproxy.io/owning-gateway-name=eg -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')

Port forward to the Envoy service:

kubectl -n envoy-gateway-system port-forward service/${ENVOY_SERVICE} 8443:443 &

Query the example app through Envoy proxy:

curl -v -HHost:www.example.com --resolve "www.example.com:8443:127.0.0.1" \
--cert client.example.com.crt --key client.example.com.key \
--cacert example.com.crt https://www.example.com:8443/get

Last modified December 20, 2024: chore: fix typo (#4958) (2a10d47)