Examining X.509 Certificates Embedded in Kubeconfig Files

12 Jun 2018 · Filed in Education

While exploring some of the intricacies around the use of X.509v3 certificates in Kubernetes, I found myself wanting to be able to view the details of a certificate embedded in a kubeconfig file. (See this page if you’re unfamiliar with what a kubeconfig file is.) In this post, I’ll share with you the commands I used to accomplish this task.

First, you’ll want to extract the certificate data from the kubeconfig file. For the purposes of this post, I’ll use a kubeconfig file named config and found in the .kube subdirectory of your home directory. Assuming there’s only a single certificate embedded in the file, you can use a simple grep statement to isolate this information:

grep 'client-certificate-data' $HOME/.kube/config

Combine that with awk to isolate only the certificate data:

grep 'client-certificate-data' $HOME/.kube/config | awk '{print $2}'

This data is Base64-encoded, so we decode it (I’ll wrap the command using backslashes for readability now that it has grown a bit longer):

grep 'client-certificate-data' $HOME/.kube/config | \
awk '{print $2}' | base64 -d

You could, at this stage, redirect the output into a file (like certificate.crt) if so desired; the data you have is a valid X.509v3 certificate. It lacks the private key, of course.

However, if you’re only interested in viewing the properties of the certificate, as I was, there’s no need to redirect the output to a file. Instead, just pipe the output into openssl:

grep 'client-certificate-data' $HOME/.kube/config | \
awk '{print $2}' | base64 -d | openssl x509 -text

The output of this command should be a decoded breakdown of the data in the X.509 certificate. Notable pieces of information in this context are the Subject (this will identify the user being authenticated to Kubernetes with this certificate):

Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 3 (0x2)
        Serial Number: 8264125584782928183 (0x72b0126f24342937)
    Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
        Issuer: CN=kubernetes
        Validity
            Not Before: Jun 13 01:52:46 2018 GMT
            Not After : Jun 13 01:53:17 2019 GMT
        Subject: CN=system:kube-controller-manager

Also of interest is the X509v3 Extended Key Usage (which indicates the certificate is used for client authentication, i.e., “TLS Web Client Authentication”):

        X509v3 extensions:
            X509v3 Key Usage: critical
                Digital Signature, Key Encipherment
            X509v3 Extended Key Usage: 
                TLS Web Client Authentication

Note that the certificate is not configured for encryption, meaning this certificate doesn’t ensure the connection to Kubernetes is encrypted. That function is handled by a different certificate; this one is only used for client authentication.

This is probably nothing new for experienced Kubernetes folks, but I thought it might prove useful to a few people out there. Feel free to hit me up on Twitter with any corrections, clarifications, or questions. Have fun examining certificate data!

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