ITGSS Certified DevOps Engineer Practice Test

How are Kubernetes Secrets stored by default?

1. Encrypted strings

2. Plain text strings

3. Base64-encoded strings

4. JSON objects

The correct answer is: Base64-encoded strings

Kubernetes Secrets are primarily stored as base64-encoded strings by default. This encoding allows Kubernetes to manage sensitive information, such as passwords, OAuth tokens, or SSH keys, in a way that minimizes exposure to accidents or accidental logging. However, it’s important to note that base64 encoding is not a form of encryption; it’s a way of representing binary data in an ASCII string format. When you create a Secret, the data is stored in etcd (the key-value store used by Kubernetes) in base64-encoded form. While this helps in disguising the raw data, it does not provide any security mechanism against data exposure or unauthorized access. Therefore, additional security measures, such as enabling encryption at rest within etcd or using external tools, should be implemented to enhance the confidentiality of the sensitive data handled by Kubernetes. Other options like plain text strings do not account for any encoding, which could lead to unintentional exposure of sensitive information. Encrypted strings suggest a level of security through cryptography that is not provided by default, while JSON objects represent structured data rather than the encoding required for storing Secrets.