Granting a Kubernetes Service Account permissions for Secrets?

You need to create Role and Role binding.

Create a role:

kind: RoleapiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1metadata: namespace: test name: role-test-accountrules:- apiGroups: [""]  resources: ["secrets"]  verbs: ["get", "list", "watch", "create", "update", "patch", "delete"]

Create a role binding:

kind: RoleBindingapiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1metadata: name: role-test-account-binding namespace: testsubjects:- kind: ServiceAccount  name: test-account  namespace: testroleRef: kind: Role name: role-test-account apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

You can read more about using RBAC Authorization

So you have your SA testaccount. Let's assume your app (the one that manipulates the secrets) has a container image myorg/myapp:01. You'd launch it then as follows:

$ kubectl -n test run myapp \    --image=myorg/myapp:01 \    --serviceaccount=testaccount

But what about the permissions? Well, doesn't really matter if you do this before or after the app has launched, but at some point in time, do:

$ kubectl create clusterrole secretmanipulator \    --verb=get --verb=list --verb=watch \    --verb=create --verb=update --verb=patch --verb=delete \    --resource=secrets $ kubectl -n test create rolebinding allowsecretmanipulation \    --clusterrole=secretmanipulator \    --serviceaccount=test:testaccount 

Note that I created a cluster role above and used a role binding then to attach it to your SA. Why? It's more reusable like that. Of course a simple role would also work here but then you'd need to re-create it for every namespace.