decryption.md

Configure Image Decryption

This document describes the method to configure encrypted container image decryption for containerd for use with the cri plugin.

Encrypted Container Images

Encrypted container images are OCI images which contain encrypted blobs. These encrypted images can be created through the use of containerd/imgcrypt project. To decrypt these images, the containerd runtime uses information passed from the cri such as keys, options and encryption metadata.

The "node" Key Model

Encryption ties trust to an entity based on the model in which a key is associated with it. We call this the key model. One such usecase is when we want to tie the trust of a key to the node in a cluster. In this case, we call it the "node" or "host" Key Model. Future work will include more key models to facilitate other trust associations (i.e. for multi-tenancy).

"node" Key Model Usecase

In this model encryption is tied to worker nodes. The usecase here revolves around the idea that an image should be decryptable only on trusted host. Using this model, various node based technologies which help bootstrap trust in worker nodes and perform secure key distribution (i.e. TPM, host attestation, secure/measured boot). In this scenario, runtimes are capable of fetching the necessary decryption keys. An example of this is using the --decryption-keys-path flag in imgcrypt.

Configuring image decryption for "node" key model

The default configuration does not handle decrypting encrypted container images.

An example for configuring the "node" key model for container image decryption:

Configure cri to enable decryption with "node" key model

[plugins."io.containerd.grpc.v1.cri".image_decryption]
  key_model = "node"

Configure containerd daemon stream_processors to handle the encrypted mediatypes.

[stream_processors]
  [stream_processors."io.containerd.ocicrypt.decoder.v1.tar.gzip"]
    accepts = ["application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar+gzip+encrypted"]
    returns = "application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar+gzip"
    path = "/usr/local/bin/ctd-decoder"
    args = ["--decryption-keys-path", "/keys"]
  [stream_processors."io.containerd.ocicrypt.decoder.v1.tar"]
    accepts = ["application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar+encrypted"]
    returns = "application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar"
    path = "/usr/local/bin/ctd-decoder"
    args = ["--decryption-keys-path", "/keys"]

In this example, container image decryption is set to use the "node" key model. In addition, the decryption stream_processors are configured as specified in containerd/imgcrypt project, with the additional field --decryption-keys-path configured to specify where decryption keys are located locally in the node.

After modify this config, you need restart the containerd service.