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by notwedtm 1543 days ago
I think K8S secrets get a bad wrap. They are not intended to be secret in the sense that they are "kept from prying eyes by default". The secret object is simply a first-class citizen that differentiates it from a ConfigMap in a way that allows distinct ACL's.

Most organizations I know will still use something like ExternalSecret for source control and then populate the Secret with the values once in cluster and to an object with very few access points.

2 comments

I think calling it a secret when it isn’t gave it a bad wrap. The last time I looked at the documentation it didn’t even clearly describe that it is not a secure object (that may have changed recently). Why call it a secret when it is not even close to one? I guess thing-to-store-secrets-if-you-use-rbac was too long.
If you don't use RBAC (or some other ACL mechanism) then it's already game over, everyone with access to your cluster already has full root access.
But it can be a secret. You can store Base64-encoded, encrypted data.

And you can encode it for example using an external KMS.

Yes I understand that. My point is until you configure it in that way it is not “secret” and the name of the object is a bit misleading, especially when first learning k8s.
Is that built-in though? Because if it isn’t then it is a bit silly to call it a secret.
I think you're looking for "bad rap" (as in "rap sheet"). A bad wrap is an unappetising tortilla.
If it's only base64 and not encrypted, that also seems like a bad wrap.
I've always seen it written as "bad rep" as in reputation.