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Freedom251 › Blog › container security

Tekton, Cosign and Kyverno: Building a Signed CI/CD Supply Chain on RKE2

By Freedom251 Team · · 7 min read

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Tekton can build and push an image, Tekton Chains can sign build-run records and image provenance, Cosign can verify those artifacts, and Kyverno can reject untrusted images at Kubernetes admission. On RKE2, this is a set of separately installed projects joined by configuration—not a turnkey RKE2 feature. The trust chain works only when the artifact, signer identity, registry access and admission policy all agree.

How the trust chain works

The goal is to keep the identity of the image built by CI connected to the image admitted to the cluster, then make the cluster check the claims your organization actually trusts.

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  1. A source revision triggers a Tekton PipelineRun, which creates TaskRuns.
  2. The pipeline builds an OCI image and pushes it to a registry. Use the resulting digest as the artifact identity rather than relying on a mutable tag.
  3. Tekton Chains watches completed runs, snapshots their results, converts them to standard payloads, signs payloads and stores them. It can sign run results and OCI images, and supports attestations such as slsa/v1.
  4. Cosign verifies the image signature and, where configured, its provenance or other attestations against your cryptographic or certificate trust rules.
  5. Kyverno applies image-verification policy when a workload is admitted. It can reject an image that lacks an expected signature or signer, or fails configured attestation checks.
  6. RKE2 runs the admitted workload.

Chains describes itself as “a Kubernetes Custom Resource Definition (CRD) controller that allows you to manage your supply chain security in Tekton.” Its role is to capture and sign build evidence; it does not make a build trustworthy merely by signing it. A valid signature establishes that an artifact or payload matches configured trust. Whether the source, build definition, dependencies and builder are acceptable depends on the signer and provenance claims your verification policy requires. See the Tekton Chains documentation, the signed provenance tutorial and Kyverno’s Sigstore verification documentation.

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What to decide before installing

Choose a trust model and registry path before wiring components together. The following are alternatives, not requirements imposed by RKE2.

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Decision Option What it means operationally
Signing identity Private key or key service Chains supports user-provided cryptographic keys and multiple key or service types. Protect the signing key, restrict which pipeline workloads can use it, and make the corresponding public trust available to verification.
Signing identity Keyless or certificate-based identity Verification relies on certificate identity and associated trust rather than a long-lived private key distributed as a Kubernetes Secret. Define which identity is expected and how the build workload obtains it.
Signature and attestation storage OCI registry-backed storage Keep signatures and attestations associated with the image in the registry, and ensure both the build system and Kyverno can write or read the required artifacts.
Signature and attestation storage Another supported Chains storage backend Chains supports multiple storage backends. Select one that fits the organization’s existing operations and ensure the verifier can retrieve the material it needs.
Admission scope Repository and resource scope Limit policy to the repositories and workload resources that should be governed; define whether it checks signatures alone or also requires provenance predicates.

These capabilities and configuration choices are documented by Tekton Chains and Kyverno. The exact fields and flags vary by release, so use documentation matching the versions you select.

Prepare RKE2 for the stack

First choose the RKE2 installation method for the host operating system, confirm the intended RKE2 and Kubernetes releases, and make sure the cluster can reach the image registry and any signing or certificate services. RKE2’s primary configuration file is normally /etc/rancher/rke2/config.yaml; changes made after the service has started require a service restart. Follow the RKE2 configuration reference and the quick start for the chosen installation path.

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Account for SELinux on enforcing hosts

The installation path changes the SELinux setup. RKE2’s RPM installation path installs and enables SELinux support automatically on supported systems. A tarball installation does not: on an enforcing host, install the RKE2 SELinux policy before installing RKE2 from the tarball. Check the RKE2 SELinux guidance and installation methods for the applicable operating system and method.

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Plan resource lifecycle and storage

RKE2 can automatically apply manifests placed in its packaged-component manifest directory. Removing a manifest file does not remove the Kubernetes resources that were created from it, so uninstalling or changing a policy engine requires deliberate resource cleanup. Use the packaged components guidance when managing those resources. RKE2’s requirements guidance recommends SSD storage when possible because embedded etcd stores data on disk; it does not size storage for this particular toolchain.

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Install and configure Tekton Pipelines and Chains

Install Tekton Pipelines before Tekton Chains: Pipelines is a Chains prerequisite. Then configure Chains for the selected signing identity, registry authentication and signature or attestation storage. Use the release-specific Chains documentation rather than assuming a configuration example from another release applies unchanged.

Tekton’s signed-provenance tutorial shows one end-to-end example: a Kaniko build pushes an image, a keypair is stored in a Kubernetes Secret, and the workflow signs the image and in-toto provenance so both can be verified. That is an example, not a requirement to use Kaniko or to keep a private key in a Kubernetes Secret. Choose a builder and signing-key or key-service arrangement appropriate to the threat model, and limit access to the signing capability.

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The tutorial uses Minikube for its local example; it does not establish that a particular set of Tekton, Chains, RKE2, registry and Kyverno releases has been tested together. Pin versions and validate the complete combination against the target cluster and registry before enforcing policy. The tutorial and Tekton additional configuration guidance provide implementation details, but do not constitute a production compatibility matrix.

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How do I sign container images built by Tekton?

  1. Configure the pipeline to build and push the image to the intended registry, with registry credentials available to the build task.
  2. Configure Chains with access to the signing key or key service and the selected storage backend. Confirm that completed TaskRuns and PipelineRuns can be observed and that Chains can write the resulting signatures and attestations.
  3. Use the pushed image digest as the reference to verify and deploy. A digest ties the check to the immutable artifact, rather than to a tag that could later point somewhere else.
  4. Confirm that the signature and provenance are retrievable from the chosen storage path, and that their signer identity and claims are the ones the verifier will require.

The tutorial demonstrates signing both the image and in-toto provenance. Which provenance predicate and signer claims matter is a policy decision; signing evidence without requiring meaningful claims at verification time does not establish that the build met your security requirements.

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How do I verify a container image signature in Kubernetes?

There are two complementary checks. Use Cosign to verify the image and its provenance during a pipeline, release check or other verification step. Then configure Kyverno’s verifyImages policy so Kubernetes admission checks the image before the workload is accepted. Admission enforcement protects the cluster even when a deployment is submitted through a path other than the expected CI pipeline.

  • Scope the policy to the intended image repositories and workload resources.
  • Specify the expected public key or certificate identity and issuer as appropriate to the selected signing model.
  • Configure Kyverno’s registry access so it can retrieve signatures and attestations.
  • Require provenance predicates only where the policy can define and verify the claims that matter, such as which build identity is trusted.
  • Use digest-pinned image references so the image Kyverno checks is the immutable image you intend to deploy.

Cosign’s verification controls and Kyverno’s policy syntax are release-sensitive. Follow the relevant Kyverno verify-images reference for release 1.9.0 and the Kyverno Sigstore documentation that matches the Kyverno release you deploy. Do not copy flags or policy fields from an older example without checking the selected version’s documentation.

Roll out and troubleshoot admission enforcement

Before broad enforcement, test the policy against distinct outcomes. This rollout sequence is an implementation practice, not a required procedure from the Kyverno documentation.

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  1. Submit an image with the expected signature, signer and required provenance. Confirm it is admitted.
  2. Submit an unsigned image from an in-scope repository. Confirm it is rejected.
  3. Submit an image signed by an unexpected identity. Confirm it is rejected.
  4. Submit a correctly signed image without a required attestation. Confirm it is rejected when the policy requires that attestation.

If an expected image is rejected or a check cannot complete, trace the handoffs rather than treating the failure as one generic signing problem:

  • Check the Tekton TaskRun and PipelineRun status to confirm the build and push completed.
  • Check Chains’ completion and signing status, including whether it could access the configured key or service.
  • Verify that the registry accepted the image and signature or attestation writes, and that Kyverno can read them.
  • Compare the signer identity emitted by the pipeline with the identity configured in policy; a valid signature from the wrong identity is still untrusted.
  • Inspect Kyverno policy reports and Kubernetes events to distinguish a signature failure, missing attestation, registry-access problem or policy-scope mismatch.
  • When a component was installed through RKE2’s manifest auto-deploy mechanism, manage the applied Kubernetes resources explicitly; deleting its manifest file alone does not remove them.

RKE2 is described as a security- and compliance-focused Kubernetes distribution, but the distribution itself does not make an application or its software supply chain compliant. The controls here depend on the trust identities, build evidence and admission rules your organization defines.

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container securityCosignKubernetesKyvernoRKE2software supply chainTekton

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