Vault for Beginners: Secrets Management in Kubernetes
The first time I ran kubectl get secret myapp -o yaml and base64-decoded the value, I felt my stomach drop. There was my database password, sitting in etcd, readable by anyone who could reach the API with the right RBAC. Kubernetes Secrets are not secrets. They’re base64-encoded plain text with a fancy name. That’s the default, and it’s the thing nobody warns you about on day one. Every cloud provider has a fix for sale. AWS has Secrets Manager, Google has Secret Manager, Azure has Key Vault. They work. The catch shows up later: the day you need to migrate, the day you want to know exactly what happens to a secret after you write it, the day you realise your most sensitive data lives in a system you can’t inspect. ...