Secret leaks often occur when a sensitive piece of authentication data is stored with the source code of an application. Considering the source code is intended to be deployed across multiple assets, including source code repositories or application hosting servers, the secrets might get exposed to an unintended audience.
In most cases, trust boundaries are violated when a secret is exposed in a source code repository or an uncontrolled deployment environment. Unintended people who don’t need to know the secret might get access to it. They might then be able to use it to gain unwanted access to associated services or resources.
The trust issue can be more or less severe depending on the people’s role and entitlement.
Commercial editions of the Sidekiq library must be downloaded from a Ruby gem server run by Contributed Systems. Users of these commercial editions are provided for credentials to these servers.
If your Sidekiq download credentials are exposed, third parties will be able to download commercial editions of Sidekiq. Unusual patterns of activity may cause Contibuted Systems to revoke these credentials, preventing legitimate downloads of these Sidekiq editions. This can prevent developers from doing their work or can cause CI/CD pipelines to fail.
Revoke the secret
Revoke any leaked secrets and remove them from the application source code.
Before revoking the secret, ensure that no other applications or processes are using it. Other usages of the secret will also be impacted when the secret is revoked.
Use a secret vault
A secret vault should be used to generate and store the new secret. This will ensure the secret’s security and prevent any further unexpected disclosure.
Depending on the development platform and the leaked secret type, multiple solutions are currently available.
FROM ubuntu:22.04 ENV BUNDLE_GEMS__CONTRIBSYS__COM=ec04a635:b5f7de0c COPY src /src WORKDIR /src RUN bundle install
FROM ubuntu:22.04 # docker build --secret id=sidekiq,env=SIDEKIQ_CREDENTIALS ... RUN export BUNDLE_GEMS__CONTRIBSYS__COM=$(cat /run/secrets/sidekiq) COPY src /src WORKDIR /src RUN bundle install