Blog: Kubernetes 1.27: KMS V2 Moves to Beta

Authors: Anish Ramasekar, Mo Khan, and Rita Zhang (Microsoft)

With Kubernetes 1.27, we (SIG Auth) are moving Key Management Service (KMS) v2 API to beta.

What is KMS?

One of the first things to consider when securing a Kubernetes cluster is encrypting etcd data at rest. KMS provides an interface for a provider to utilize a key stored in an external key service to perform this encryption.

KMS v1 has been a feature of Kubernetes since version 1.10, and is currently in beta as of version v1.12. KMS v2 was introduced as alpha in v1.25.

Note

The KMS v2 API and implementation changed in incompatible ways in-between the alpha release in v1.25 and the beta release in v1.27. The design of KMS v2 has changed since the previous blog postwas written and it is not compatible with the design in this blog post. Attempting to upgrade from old versions with the alpha feature enabled will result in data loss.

What’s new in v2beta1?

The KMS encryption provider uses an envelope encryption scheme to encrypt data in etcd. The data is encrypted using a data encryption key (DEK). The DEKs are encrypted with a key encryption key (KEK) that is stored and managed in a remote KMS. With KMS v1, a new DEK is generated for each encryption. With KMS v2, a new DEK is only generated on server startup and when the KMS plugin informs the API server that a KEK rotation has occurred.

Caution

If you are running virtual machine (VM) based nodes that leverage VM state store with this feature, you must not use KMS v2.

With KMS v2, the API server uses AES-GCM with a 12 byte nonce (8 byte atomic counter and 4 bytes random data) for encryption. The following issues could occur if the VM is saved and restored:

1. The counter value may be lost or corrupted if the VM is saved in an inconsistent state or restored improperly. This can lead to a situation where the same counter value is used twice, resulting in the same nonce being used for two different messages.
2. If the VM is restored to a previous state, the counter value may be set back to its previous value, resulting in the same nonce being used again.

Although both of these cases are partially mitigated by the 4 byte random nonce, this can compromise the security of the encryption.

Sequence Diagram

Encrypt Request

Decrypt Request

Status Request

Generate Data Encryption Key (DEK)

Performance Improvements

With KMS v2, we have made significant improvements to the performance of the KMS encryption provider. In case of KMS v1, a new DEK is generated for every encryption. This means that for every write request, the API server makes a call to the KMS plugin to encrypt the DEK using the remote KEK. The API server also has to cache the DEKs to avoid making a call to the KMS plugin for every read request. When the API server restarts, it has to populate the cache by making a call to the KMS plugin for every DEK in the etcd store based on the cache size. This is a significant overhead for the API server. With KMS v2, the API server generates a DEK at startup and caches it. The API server also makes a call to the KMS plugin to encrypt the DEK using the remote KEK. This is a one-time call at startup and on KEK rotation. The API server then uses the cached DEK to encrypt the resources. This reduces the number of calls to the KMS plugin and improves the overall latency of the API server requests.

We conducted a test that created 12k secrets and measured the time taken for the API server to encrypt the resources. The metric used wasapiserver_storage_transformation_duration_seconds. For KMS v1, the test was run on a managed Kubernetes v1.25 cluster with 2 nodes. There was no additional load on the cluster during the test. For KMS v2, the test was run in the Kubernetes CI environment with the following cluster configuration.

The results show that the KMS v2 encryption provider is three orders of magnitude faster than the KMS v1 encryption provider.

What's next?

For Kubernetes v1.28, we expect the feature to stay in beta. In the coming releases we want to investigate:

• Cryptographic changes to remove the limitation on VM state store.
• Kubernetes REST API changes to enable a more robust story around key rotation.
• Handling undecryptable resources. Refer to theKEP for details.

You can learn more about KMS v2 by reading Using a KMS provider for data encryption. You can also follow along on theKEPto track progress across the coming Kubernetes releases.

Call to action

In this blog post, we have covered the improvements made to the KMS encryption provider in Kubernetes v1.27. We have also discussed the new KMS v2 API and how it works. We would love to hear your feedback on this feature. In particular, we would like feedback from Kubernetes KMS plugin implementors as they go through the process of building their integrations with this new API. Please reach out to us on the #sig-auth-kms-devchannel on Kubernetes Slack.

How to get involved

If you are interested in getting involved in the development of this feature, share feedback, or participate in any other ongoing SIG Auth projects, please reach out on the#sig-auth channel on Kubernetes Slack.

You are also welcome to join the bi-weekly SIG Auth meetings, held every-other Wednesday.

Acknowledgements

This feature has been an effort driven by contributors from several different companies. We would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone that contributed their time and effort to help make this possible.