I was thinking about a situation like this -

*) Puppet designer decides to place all credentials in a single database 
(encrypted Hiera).
*) developers clone the version controlled copy of it all over the place, 
e.g. to their laptops, that random box that everyone logs into.
*) version controlled copy then potentially sits next to copies of the keys 
used to decipher it.
*) some lazy developer decides not to use a passphrase in his key.
*) laptop then gets hacked, lost or stolen, etc.

Perhaps I'm being paranoid?


On Monday, April 14, 2014 2:17:36 AM UTC+10, Matthew Kennedy wrote:
>
> We use hiera-eyaml... This let's us selectively encrypt keys (passwords) 
> and let everything else remain plaintext. 
>
> We use git and have very little concern as long as we keep our private key 
> secure. 
>
> We also publish our public key so others can encrypt sensitive data 
> themselves. Because we have several teams that have ownership over various 
> pieces of sensitive information this makes managing secrets 'easy'. 
> On Apr 13, 2014 4:05 AM, "Alex Harvey" <[email protected] <javascript:>> 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm pondering a design problem and would appreciate some advice:
>>
>> A reason for externalising data in Hiera is often said to be so that 
>> configuration data can be stored in a version control system, e.g.
>> http://puppetlabs.com/blog/first-look-installing-and-using-hiera
>>
>> Meanwhile, the reason for using an encrypted Hiera backend is so that 
>> sensitive configuration data can be stored in Hiera, e.g.
>>
>> http://www.craigdunn.org/2011/10/secret-variables-in-puppet-with-hiera-and-gpg/
>>
>> Thus, there is a catch: if data is too sensitive to be stored in an 
>> unencrypted Hiera backend, it is probably too sensitive to be stored in a 
>> version control system like git.
>>
>> I've seen people out there have considered encrypted version control 
>> systems, others have said sensitive configuration data shouldn't be stored 
>> at all, and so on - I can't find much discussion of the problem itself 
>> though.
>>
>> After thinking about it for a while, the best I could come up with was 
>> supposing there ought to be a way of partially encrypting the Hiera 
>> backend, and perhaps dealing with it using a separate level in the 
>> hierarchy.
>>
>> I note the Raziel project along these lines by Jens Bräuer:
>> https://github.com/jbraeuer/raziel/
>> http://bit.ly/raziel-slides 
>>
>> Is this more of an open problem or has the community come up with a best 
>> practice recommendation here?
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Alex
>>
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