Kloak

Judgement

What it is

Building block

What it does

A Kubernetes component that uses eBPF to intercept outbound TLS traffic and swap placeholder values for real secrets in the kernel, so applications and AI agents never see the secrets.

Adopt it when

You run untrusted code or AI agents on Kubernetes that must call APIs without holding the keys.

Watch out

Created in 2026, AGPL-3.0, and in-kernel TLS patching is a novel technique to trust.

Ready for

Experimental

Runs as

Self-hosted server

Built with

C, Go, eBPF and Kubernetes

How established

Young: started 8 months ago, latest release v0.3.0.

What the license allows

Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: Kloak → GCC → LLVM project → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to Kloak

1. 1
   SOPS getsops

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2. 2
   OpenBao openbao

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3. 3
   Dotenvx dotenvx

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   Developer tool Production-ready Your team shares .env files and wants them encrypted in the repo without adopting a secrets server.

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4. 4
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   Developer tool Usable A small team wants a few secret files in Git and already uses GPG.

   ★ 4.1k MIT Shell Active, pushed 35 days ago
5. 5
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6. 6
   Pwd.sh drduh

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7. 7
   WrongSecrets OWASP

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8. 8
   Berglas GoogleCloudPlatform

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Commercial secrets managers

1. 1
   HashiCorp Vault Enterprise HashiCorp

   Building block Production-ready A large organisation needs central secrets management across many teams and clouds, with compliance features.

   Commercial
2. 2
   AWS Secrets Manager Amazon Web Services

   AWS Secrets Manager allows you to rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets through their lifecycle.

   Building block Production-ready Your workloads run on AWS and you want secrets managed with IAM rather than another vendor.

   Commercial
3. 3
   1Password Secrets Automation AgileBits

   Securely store, manage, automate, and share secrets for your applications and infrastructure where and when you need them. 1Password secrets management has you covered.

   Developer tool Production-ready Your company already uses 1Password and wants infrastructure secrets in the same place as staff passwords.

   Commercial
4. 4
   Doppler Doppler

   Doppler's secrets management platform helps teams secure, sync, and automate secrets across cloud and on-prem environments with security and developer-friendly workflows.

   Developer tool Production-ready A development team wants to stop passing .env files around and sync secrets to many platforms easily.

   Commercial