Secure BGP sessions

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Big picture

Use BGP passwords to prevent attackers from injecting false routing information.

Value

Setting a password on a BGP peering from the cluster to an external BGP speaker means that that peering will only work when the external speaker has the same password. This provides a layer of defense against an attacker impersonating the external speaker, for example in order to inject malicious routing information into the cluster.

Features

This how-to guide uses the following Calico features:

  • BGPPeer with password field

Concepts

Password protection on BGP sessions

Password protection is a standardized optional feature of BGP sessions. The effect is that the two peers at either end of a BGP session can only communicate, and exchange routing information, if they are both configured with the same password.

Please note that password use does not cause the data exchange to be encrypted. It remains relatively easy to eavesdrop on the data exchange, but not to inject false information.

Using Kubernetes secrets to store passwords

In Kubernetes, the Secret resource is designed for holding sensitive information, including passwords. Therefore, for this Calico feature, we use Secrets to store BGP passwords.

How to

To use a password on a BGP peering:

  1. Create (or update) a Kubernetes secret in the namespace where calico-node is running, so that it has a key whose value is the desired password. Note the secret name and the key name.

    Note: BGP passwords must be 80 characters or fewer. If a password longer than that is configured, the BGP sessions with that password will fail to be established.

  2. Ensure that calico-node has RBAC permissions to access that secret.

  3. Specify the secret and key name on the relevant BGPPeer resource.

Create or update Kubernetes secret

For example:

kubectl create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: bgp-secrets
  namespace: kube-system
type: Opaque
stringData:
  rr-password: very-secret
EOF

If calico-node in your cluster is running in a namespace other than kube-system, you should create the secret in that namespace instead of in kube-system.

To use this password below in a BGPPeer resource, you need to note the secret name bgp-secrets and key name rr-password.

Ensure RBAC permissions

The calico-node pod must have permission to access that secret. To allow calico-node to access that secret, you would configure:

kubectl create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  name: secret-access
  namespace: <namespace>
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["secrets"]
  resourceNames: ["bgp-secrets"]
  verbs: ["watch", "list", "get"]
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
  name: secret-access
  namespace: <namespace>
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Role
  name: secret-access
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: calico-node
  namespace: <namespace>
EOF

Specify secret and key name on the BGPPeer resource

Then, when configuring a BGP peer, include the secret and key name in the specification of the BGPPeer resource, like this:

apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: BGPPeer
metadata:
  name: bgppeer-global-3040
spec:
  peerIP: 192.20.30.40
  asNumber: 64567
  password:
    secretKeyRef:
      name: bgp-secrets
      key: rr-password

Above and beyond

For more detail about the BGPPeer resource, see BGPPeer.

For more on configuring BGP peers, see configuring BGP peers.