VA-003 Compare and configure secrets engines Practice Question
A financial services company runs a microservices application on Kubernetes. Each service needs to authenticate to Vault using Kubernetes auth and then read secrets from a shared KV v2 engine mounted at 'shared-kv'. The security team requires that Service-A can only read secrets under 'shared-kv/team-alpha/*' and Service-B can only read secrets under 'shared-kv/team-beta/*'. The Vault administrator has already configured the Kubernetes auth method and created roles for each service with bound service account names. However, both services are currently able to read all paths under 'shared-kv/'. The administrator wants to enforce the least privilege access. Which course of action should the administrator take?
⚠ Common exam trap
HashiCorp often tests the misconception that 'path_deny' is a valid capability in Vault ACL policies, when in fact Vault uses default-deny and explicit allow, so candidates incorrectly choose Option C instead of updating the allowed paths.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Review and update the policy attached to the Kubernetes auth roles to restrict capabilities to the specific paths, e.g., 'path "shared-kv/data/team-alpha/*" { capabilities = ["read"] }'.
The issue is that the policy attached to the Kubernetes auth roles grants read access to the entire 'shared-kv/*' path. By updating the policy to restrict capabilities to specific paths like 'shared-kv/data/team-alpha/*' and 'shared-kv/data/team-beta/*', the administrator enforces least privilege. The 'data' prefix is required for KV v2 engines to access secret data, and the wildcard ensures only the respective team's secrets are readable.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure the Kubernetes auth role to use 'token_policies' with a restrictive policy and ensure the bound service account names are correct.
Why it's wrong here
This is already assumed to be done; the issue is the policy content, not the binding.
- ✗
Create a new secrets engine for each team and mount them at 'team-alpha' and 'team-beta', then assign each service to its respective engine.
Why it's wrong here
While this would work, it is overkill and not necessary; policy restrictions on the existing engine are sufficient.
- ✗
Add a 'path_deny' capability in the policy for the disallowed paths.
Why it's wrong here
Vault policies use 'deny' as a capability only in Sentinel policies, not in standard ACL policies; the correct approach is to simply not grant access.
- ✓
Review and update the policy attached to the Kubernetes auth roles to restrict capabilities to the specific paths, e.g., 'path "shared-kv/data/team-alpha/*" { capabilities = ["read"] }'.
Why this is correct
This directly restricts each service to its allowed paths using Vault's policy language.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This VA-003 practice question is part of Courseiva's free HashiCorp certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the VA-003 exam.