I'm trying to implement Azure Key Vault in .NET Web API app.
Can anyone let me know if I can use Secret Uri directly in appsettings.json.
Please find the image.Key vault Uri
No, the secret URI method only works in Azure settings.
To use them within your application's configuration file, you would need to manually resolve the secrets in your code with the Key Vault SDK.
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I am currently working moving from using App Services to Azure Kubernetes Service for a group of APIs running in .Net Core. It is all going well with the exception of Azure Key Vault, so I am hoping that somebody can help me out.
I need to store database connection strings for each of these APIS securely, so have chosen to use Azure Key Vault, but I am not actually sure why or if the Secrets Store CSI driver is necessary for what we are aiming for. Can we not just create an access policy in Azure Key Vault for the AKS node to have access too to retrieve the key? Or just use a managed identity? I can then use the Key Vault SDK in the app code.
If anyone can shed some light on this I would really appriciate it as I just seem to be coming across the CSI driver in all documentation/videos I find. If we do need to use it, I would just like to know why so I have a better understanding.
I have tried using the CSI driver, as well as trying to retrieve without the CSI driver. At the moment I am struggling to get either to work. However once I know if I need the CSI driver, I can go with the correct approach, as currently I am bouncing around between different ones.
Thanks in advance!
Both options (injecting secrets using the Secrets Store CSI Driver or fetching them directly from the vault in the application using .NET SDK) are perfectly valid options.
The secrets store CSI driver acts as an intermediate layer between the application and the key vault and makes the secrets from the vault available to the application as either files or environment variables. The secret store driver uses a managed identity attached to the underlying scaleset to access the key vault.
This means that:
The application becomes independent of how the keys are stored at rest, which makes it easier to test locally as well as deploy in environments other than Azure.
The application does not need to have access or manage credentials to the key vault since the secrets is pushed into the container where the applications runs by the CSI driver (as opposed to being pulled in by the application itself)
When using the Azure SDK your application will connect directly to the key vault and there is no need for an intermediate component, but this couples your application tightly to Azure Key vault. You also end up with the challenge of how to provide credentials to your application to authenticate to the key vault. Since those credentials cannot be stored in a key vault, you need another construct providing you an identity, like AAD Pod Identities or the newer Azure AD workload identity. So even though you don't use the Secret Store CSI driver you will most likely need another component to facilitate authentication to the key vault.
I've been reading a lot lately about managing secrets with Azure Key Vault. I managed to create and install a .pfx certificate in a server with Ubuntu 20.04 and uploaded the certificate to my Azure AD following these steps.
The certificate is found correctly before connecting to my Key Vault and the secrets are retrieved when I am in development both from Windows and Linux (WSL). However, when I deploy the app to my production server, the service I created to manage kestrel throws a 'core-dump' error, similar to this issue.
But in my case, when I check the journal, I find the following:
Unhandled exception. System.InvalidOperationException: Sequence contains no elements
Surprisingly, this doesn't happen if I just manually run the application by using "dotnet app.dll".
How is this even possible? It opens the store, finds the certificate and access the secrets if I run it manually but doesn't find anything when is run by the service.
This is the relevant code I am using to configure the access to Key Vault in my Program.cs:
// Azure Key Vault configuration.
using var store = new X509Store(StoreLocation.CurrentUser);
store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly);
var certs = store.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindByThumbprint, configuration["KeyVault:AzureADCertThumbprint"], false);
configuration.AddAzureKeyVault(
new Uri($"https://{configuration["KeyVault:KeyVaultName"]}.vault.azure.net/"),
new ClientCertificateCredential(configuration["KeyVault:AzureADDirectoryId"], configuration["KeyVault:AzureADApplicationId"], certs.OfType<X509Certificate2>().Single()),
new KeyVaultSecretManager());
store.Close();
Can anyone help me to find the issue? Thanks in advance.
I checked some Microsoft docs and I didn't found anything wrong with code to access the key vault. I guess you may forget something in application setting on portal, as your code has no problem.
After creating your certificate, configure Azure AD and associate the certificate after that we can access Azure Key Vault from .NET Client using X509 Certificate.
After importing the certificate and casting Certificate Data to Base64, we should create Azure Resource Manager AD Application and Service Principal. Successfully configuring Azure Resource Manager Application and Service Principal for an Azure Key Vault could solve the problem you are facing.
Check this Accessing Azure Key Vaults Using Certification and Setup Key Vault using Azure AD Application and Certificates for more information.
We have an application running on a VM in our Service Fabric service in Azure.
To communicate with one of our partner's Rest APIs, we need to use a client certificate. (_restClient.ClientCertificate = ...)
So my first attempt was to add the Certificate (pfx, including a private key) to our Azure Key Vault. And then the application receives it from the Key Vault. However ,I don't seem to be getting the private part of the certificate, which is needed to sign the package. This question, Is it possible to get the private key out of Azure Key Vault Keys?, also seems to try the same thing without success.
I also found this article: Use an SSL certificate in your application code in Azure App Service. However, that only seems to handle the case when you run a Web App from an App Service. But since I don't use that, I don't understand if this can be applied in my case.
So how do I get ahold of the ClientCertificate from Azure that I need to use in my RestRequest?
You are on the right track. once you have certificates in your key vault all you need is a key vault client to get certificate from there, which you can assign to your rest client.
this link has enough info to help you get the complete certificate from your vault
I have an encrypted "RSA PRIVATE KEY" ".key" RSA PKCS#1 key (which I understand from here) does not include a key type OID).
I also have the password to decrypt it. I am using it to create an encrypted and signed URL.
I have managed to get the code working locally, but now I need to figure how to secure it on an Azure web app (I'm using C# MVC 5 with .NET Framework 4.6 and a SQL Server back end). I was helped along by this great post, but it is an older link that either I can't figure out how to use or it's longer valid. Azure seems to only allow me to upload a .pfx file.
Depending on what you want to use it for you could use Azure Key Vault to store the secure key safely.
If you want to use the key to enable SSL then you probably need to do as suggested in comments and convert it to pfx-format and then upload it to the App Service.
Azure Key Vault can store your key and you can control access to it with role-based security in Azure. Import your key to the Key Vault and then access it securely from your application.
I've read in most articles that deploying an application in Azure is needed such that an application will be able programmatically access the secrets stored in the Azure Key Vault.
Is there a way to not deploy the application in azure and have it still be able to access the Azure Key Vault to fetch the secrets either by using client id and client secret or certificates?
There's no need to run your application in Azure for you to use Azure KeyVault. Your application can run on your local machine, somewhere on your intranet, in AWS or where-ever you like.
In order to access KeyVault, you need a security token from Azure Active Directory (AAD), so you do need to register your application within an AAD directory.
You can find more information on getting a token to talk to Azure KeyVault in this blog post here.