KES

KES is a stateless and distributed key-management system for high-performance applications. We built KES as the bridge between modern applications - running as containers on Kubernetes - and centralized KMS solutions. Therefore, KES has been designed to be simple, scalable and secure by default. It has just a few knobs to tweak instead of a complex configuration and does not require a deep understanding of secure key-management or cryptography.

Architecture

Install

Binary Releases

You can also verify the binary with minisign by downloading the corresponding .minisig signature file. Then run:

minisign -Vm kes-<OS>-<ARCH> -P RWTx5Zr1tiHQLwG9keckT0c45M3AGeHD6IvimQHpyRywVWGbP1aVSGav

Docker

Pull the latest release via:

docker pull minio/kes

Build from source

GO111MODULE=on go get github.com/minio/kes/cmd/kes

You will need a working Go environment. Therefore, please follow How to install Go. Minimum version required is go1.14

Getting Started

We run a public KES server instance at https://play.min.io:7373 for you to experiment with. Just follow the steps below to get a first impression of how easy it is to use KES as a client. All you need is cURL.

If you instead want to run a KES server locally as your first steps then checkout our Getting Started Guide.

1. Fetch the root identity

As an initial step, you will need to download the "private" key and certificate to authenticate to the KES server as the root identity.

curl -sSL --tlsv1.2 \
   -O 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minio/kes/master/root.key' \
   -O 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minio/kes/master/root.cert'

2. Create a new master key

Then, you can create a new master key named e.g. my-key.

curl -sSL --tlsv1.3 --http2 \
    --key root.key \
    --cert root.cert \
    -X POST 'https://play.min.io:7373/v1/key/create/my-key'

Note that creating a new key will fail with key does already exist if it already exist.

3. Generate a new data encryption key (DEK)

Now, you can use that master key to derive a new data encryption key.

curl -sSL --tlsv1.3 --http2 \
    --key root.key \
    --cert root.cert \
    --data '{}' \
    -X POST 'https://play.min.io:7373/v1/key/generate/my-key'

You will get a plaintext and a ciphertext data key. The ciphertext data key is the encrypted version of the plaintext key. Your application would use the plaintext key to e.g. encrypt some application data but only remember the ciphertext key version.

4. Use the KES CLI client

For more sophisticated tasks, like managing policies or audit log tracing, you may want to use the KES CLI. Therefore, point your CLI to our KES instance:

export KES_SERVER=https://play.min.io:7373
export KES_CLIENT_KEY=root.key
export KES_CLIENT_CERT=root.cert

Then run a KES CLI command. For example:

kes key list

If you want to learn more about KES checkout our documentation.

License

Use of KES is governed by the AGPLv3 license that can be found in the LICENSE file.