Pass the CyberArk CyberArk Secrets Manager SECRET-SEN Questions and answers with CertsForce

According to the CyberArk Sentry Secrets Manager documentation, auto-failover is a feature that enables the automatic promotion of a standby node to a leader node in case of a leader failure. Auto-failover requires a quorum, which is a majority of nodes in the cluster that are available and synchronized. A quorum ensures that only one node can be promoted to a leader at a time and prevents split-brain scenarios. In the exhibit, each option shows a network diagram of a load balancer and four nodes, one of which is crossed out with a red X, indicating a leader failure. The text below each diagram indicates whether there is a quorum or not. Option C is the only example where auto-failover will occur, because there is a quorum of three out of four nodes, and one of the standby nodes can be promoted to a leader. Option A will not have auto-failover, because there is no quorum, as only two out of four nodes are available. Option B will not have auto-failover, because there is no quorum, as only one out of four nodes is available. Option D will not have auto-failover, because there is no quorum, as none of the nodes are available. References: 1: Auto-failover 2: Configure auto-failover

= According to the CyberArk Sentry Secrets Manager documentation, the replace method is used to overwrite an existing policy branch with a new policy file. This method is suitable for making changes to the existing resources, such as modifying their annotations, permissions, or attributes. The replace method preserves the existing data and secrets associated with the resources, but removes any resources that are not defined in the new policy file. Therefore, to change the annotations for authentication of a Conjur host, the replace method is the best option.

The append method is used to add new resources or data to an existing policy branch, without affecting the existing resources. This method is suitable for creating new hosts, groups, variables, or secrets, but not for modifying the existing ones. The append method will ignore any changes to the existing resources, such as annotations, and will only load the new resources or data.

The delete method is used to remove resources or data from an existing policy branch, without affecting the other resources. This method is suitable for deleting hosts, groups, variables, or secrets, but not for modifying them. The delete method will remove any resources or data that are defined in the policy file, and will ignore any resources or data that are not defined in the policy file.

The update method is used to modify the data or secrets associated with existing resources, without affecting the resources themselves. This method is suitable for changing the values of variables or secrets, but not for changing the annotations, permissions, or attributes of the resources. The update method will only load the data or secrets that are defined in the policy file, and will ignore any resources or data that are not defined in the policy file. References: = Annotation reference | CyberArk Docs; Policy load modes | CyberArk Docs; Policy - docs.cyberark.com

 Conjur uses TLS certificates for authentication between nodes and clients. These certificates are either self-signed by Conjur or imported from a third-party CA. All the certificates are stored in the /opt/conjur/etc/ssl directory from the Conjur containers. This directory contains the following files:

ca.crt: The CA certificate used to verify all Conjur node certificates. This is either the self-signed Conjur CA certificate or the imported third-party CA certificate.

server.crt: The server certificate used by the Conjur node for HTTPS and mTLS connections. This certificate contains the DNS names of the node and the load balancer in the CN and SAN fields.

server.key: The private key corresponding to the server certificate.

cert.pem: A symbolic link to the server certificate file.

key.pem: A symbolic link to the server key file.

References: Certificate architecture, Certificate requirements, Rotate certificates

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Conjur is a secrets management solution that securely stores and manages secrets and credentials used by applications, DevOps tools, and other systems. Conjur provides a REST API that enables users to perform various operations on Conjur objects, such as secrets, policies, roles, and resources. The API endpoint for each Conjur object is composed of the base URL of the Conjur server, followed by the object type and identifier. For example, the API endpoint for a secret named db-password in the dev/my-app policy is:

https:// /secrets/dev/my-app/db-password

To discover secrets inside of Conjur, the API endpoint that can be used is Resources. Resources are Conjur objects that have permissions and annotations associated with them, such as secrets, hosts, groups, and layers. The Resources API endpoint allows users to list, search, and filter resources based on various criteria, such as kind, owner, policy, and annotation. For example, the following API request will return a list of all secrets owned by the user alice:

https:// /resources?kind=variable&owner=user:alice

The Resources API endpoint can help users to discover secrets inside of Conjur by providing information such as the name, ID, policy, owner, and annotations of each secret. Users can also use the Resources API endpoint to check the permissions and audit records of each secret, and to retrieve the secret value if they have the read permission.

References = Conjur API; Resources API; Secrets API

 The correct order of the steps is:

Define the Application with the desired authentication details

Add the Application ID and Application Provider ID to the safe with appropriate permissions

Configure application to call the appropriate REST API to retrieve the secret and test

Explanation: To allow an application to retrieve a secret with the CCP, the following steps are required:

Define the Application with the desired authentication details: This step involves creating an Application object in the Vault with a unique Application ID and an Application Provider ID. The Application Provider ID is used to identify the CCP instance that will serve the request. The Application object also defines the authentication method and parameters that the application will use to connect to the CCP, such as certificate, password, or AppRole.

Add the Application ID and Application Provider ID to the safe with appropriate permissions: This step involves granting the Application object the necessary permissions to access the safe and the secret that it needs. The Application ID and the Application Provider ID are added as members of the safe with at least List and Retrieve permissions. The secret name or ID can also be specified as a restriction to limit the access to a specific secret within the safe.

Configure application to call the appropriate REST API to retrieve the secret and test: This step involves configuring the application to send a REST API request to the CCP endpoint with the required parameters, such as the Application ID, the Application Provider ID, the safe name, and the secret name or ID. The application should also provide the authentication credentials or token that match the method defined in the Application object. The application should receive a JSON response from the CCP with the secret value and other metadata. The application should test the connection and the secret retrieval before deploying to production.

References:

CyberArk Secrets Manager

Sentry - Secrets Manager - Sample Items & Study Guide

Sentry - Secrets

Secrets Management Essentials for Developers

The log entry shows a failed authentication attempt with Conjur using the authn-jwt method. This method allows applications to authenticate with Conjur using JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) that are signed by a trusted identity provider. In this case, the application is Jenkins, which is a CI/CD tool that can integrate with Conjur using the Conjur Jenkins plugin. The plugin allows Jenkins to securely retrieve secrets from Conjur and inject them as environment variables into Jenkins pipelines or projects.

The log entry indicates that the JWT sent by Jenkins was rejected by Conjur because of an SSL connection error. The error message says that the certificate chain of Jenkins could not be verified by Conjur, and that the certificate authority (CA) that signed the Jenkins certificate was unknown to Conjur. This means that the Jenkins certificate chain is not trusted by Conjur, and that Conjur does not have the CA certificate of Jenkins in its trust store. Therefore, Conjur cannot establish a secure and trusted connection with Jenkins, and cannot validate the JWT signature.

To fix this problem, the Jenkins certificate chain needs to be trusted by Conjur. This can be done by copying the CA certificate of Jenkins to the Conjur server, and adding it to the Conjur trust store. The Conjur trust store is a directory that contains the CA certificates of the trusted identity providers for the authn-jwt method. The Conjur server also needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

References = Conjur Jenkins Plugin; Conjur JWT Authentication; Conjur Trust Store

This is the correct answer because the Conjur Token is a JSON Web Token (JWT) that is signed by the Conjur master and contains the identity and permissions of the application. The Conjur Token is stateless, meaning that it does not depend on any stored session or transaction information on the server side. Therefore, any Conjur follower can validate the Token by verifying the signature and the expiration time, and satisfy the request by retrieving the credential from the local database. This allows the Conjur followers to be horizontally scalable and load balanced, and to provide high availability and performance for the applications. This answer is based on the Conjur documentation1 and the Conjur training course2.

Create an authenticator policy for each authenticator and then load the policy to Conjur.

Add each authenticator to conjur.yml using this format: <authenticator type> .

Execute evoke configuration apply.

Comprehensive Explanation: Authenticators are plugins that enable Conjur to authenticate requests from different types of clients, such as Kubernetes, Azure, or LDAP. To configure authenticators, you need to follow these steps:

Create an authenticator policy for each authenticator and then load the policy to Conjur. This step defines the authenticator as a resource in Conjur and grants permissions to the users or hosts that can use it. You can use the policy templates provided by Conjur for each authenticator type, or create your own custom policy. For more information, see Define Authenticator Policy.

Add each authenticator to conjur.yml using this format: <authenticator type> . This step enables the authenticator service on the Conjur server and specifies the service ID that identifies the authenticator instance. The service ID must match the one used in the policy. For more information, see Enable Authenticators.

Execute evoke configuration apply. This step applies the changes made to the conjur.yml file and restarts the Conjur service. This is necessary for the authenticator configuration to take effect. For more information, see Apply Configuration Changes.

References: The steps to configure authenticators are explained in detail in the Configure Authenticators section of the CyberArk Conjur Enterprise documentation. The image in the question is taken from the same source.

 Conjur Summon is an open source utility that can fetch secrets from Conjur and export them as environment variables to a sub-process environment. This way, the secrets are not exposed or stored in the script, but are only available at run time. To use Conjur Summon, you need to install the summon-conjur provider on each workstation, define the secrets in a secrets.yml file, and wrap the PowerShell script in summon. For example, if the secret ID is win/domain/cred, the secrets.yml file would look like this:

DOMAIN_CRED: !var win/domain/cred

And the summon command would look like this:

summon --provider summon-conjur powershell script.ps1

This will inject the secret value of win/domain/cred as an environment variable named DOMAIN_CRED to the PowerShell script. The script can then access the secret using the $env:DOMAIN_CRED syntax.

References: Summon-inject secrets, cyberark/summon-conjur

According to the CyberArk Sentry Secrets Manager documentation, Conjur is a secrets management solution that consists of a leader node and one or more follower nodes. The leader node is responsible for managing the secrets, policies, and audit records, while the follower nodes are read-only replicas that can serve secrets requests from applications. Additionally, Conjur supports a standby node, which is a special type of follower node that can be promoted to a leader node in case of a leader failure. A standby node is synchronized with the leader node and can take over its role in a disaster recovery scenario. A possible Conjur node role change is when a standby node is promoted to a leader node, either manually or automatically, using the auto-failover feature. A follower node cannot be promoted to a leader node, as it does not have the same data and functionality as the leader node. A standby node cannot be promoted to a follower node, as it already has the same capabilities as a follower node, plus the ability to become a leader node. A leader node cannot be demoted to a standby node in the event of a failover, as it would lose its data and functionality and would not be able to resume its role as a leader node. References: 1: Conjur Architecture 2: Deploying Conjur on AWS 3: Auto-failover