Akeyless Authentication and fetching secrets

GitHub Actions Plugin

Introduction

GitHub Actions enables you to automate workflows for your GitHub-hosted repositories. With the Github Actions plugin, you can fetch secrets directly from Akeyless into your workflows. This guide describes how to use our various Authentication Methods to fetch Static, Dynamic, and Rotated secrets, as well as SSH and PKI certificates, from Akeyless.

Before Adding Akeyless GitHub Action

⚠️ Important: Setting ACTIONS_RUNNER_DEBUG to true can expose sensitive information in your error logs. Use with caution.

Inputs

Name	Required	Type	Value
access-id	No	`string`	The `access id` for your auth method. If token is not provided this field is required.
access-type	No	`string`	Default: `jwt`. The login method to use. Valid options are `jwt`/`access_key`/`universal_identity`/`aws_iam`/`azure_ad`/`gcp`/`k8s`.
token	No	`string`	A valid Akeyless token.
api-url	No	`string`	Default: `https://api.akeyless.io`. The API endpoint to use.
static-secrets	No	`string`	A YAML list representing static secrets to fetch.
dynamic-secrets	No	`string`	A YAML list representing dynamic secrets to fetch.
rotated-secrets	No	`string`	A YAML list representing rotated secrets to fetch.
ssh-certificates	No	`string`	A YAML list representing ssh certificates to fetch.
pki-certificates	No	`string`	A YAML list representing pki certificates to fetch.
export-secrets-to-outputs	No	`boolean`	Default: `true`. True/False to denote if secrets should be exported as environment variables.
export-secrets-to-environment	No	`boolean`	Default: `true`. True/False to denote if secrets should be exported as action outputs.
access-key	No	`string`	Access key (relevant only for access-type=`access_key`).
gcp-audience	No	`string`	GCP audience to use in signed JWT (relevant only for access-type=`gcp`).
gateway-url	No	`string`	Gateway URL for the K8s authenticated (relevant only for access-type=`k8s`/`oauth2`).
k8s-auth-config-name	No	`string`	The K8s Auth config name (relevant only for access-type=`k8s`).
uid_token	No	`string`	The Universal Identity token (relevant only for access-type=universal_identity).

Outputs

The job outputs are determined by the values set in your static-secrets/dynamic-secrets/rotated-secrets/ssh-certificates/pki-certificates inputs.

Default Outputs

The default behavior will create a single output/env variable that uses the name you set for the output.

Name	Value
outputs	use `${{ steps.JOB_NAME.outputs.SECRET_NAME }}`
environment variables	use `${{ env.SECRET_NAME }}`

Extracting from JSON by field name

For each Akeyless secret you can extract a specific field out of the JSON by adding the field key name.

For example, for the following static secret value name "github-static-secret-json":

{
  "imp": "needed",
  "no": "no_need"
}

We can use:

    - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
      output-name: "my_first_secret"
      key: "imp"

and in "steps.output.my_first_secret" the value will be "needed".

Debugging

There is an option to get more detailed logs from the Akeyless Github Action by setting the ACTIONS_RUNNER_DEBUG secret or variable to true in the repository that contains the workflow.

⚠️ Important: Setting ACTIONS_RUNNER_DEBUG to true can expose sensitive information in your error logs. Use with caution.

Examples

Although this repository's workflows use placeholder values, it is still a real Akeyless account and real providers. The approaches demonstrated are still valid as-is for real implementations. Use these to your advantage!

Static Secrets Demo

Static secrets are the easiest to use. Just define the secret's path and the secret's output.

jobs:
  fetch_secrets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      id-token: write
      contents: read

    steps:
      - name: Fetch static secrets from Akeyless
        uses: akeyless-community/[email protected]
        id: fetch-secrets
        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: jwt
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret"
              output-name: "my_second_secret"
      - name: Use Akeyless secret
        run: |
            echo "Step Outputs"
            echo "my_first_secret: ${{ steps.fetch-secrets.outputs.my_first_secret }}" >> secrets.txt
            echo "my_second_secret: ${{ steps.fetch-secrets.outputs.my_second_secret }}" >> secrets.txt
            
            echo "Environment Variables"
            echo "my_first_secret: ${{ env.my_first_secret }}" >> secrets.txt
            echo "my_second_secret: ${{ env.my_second_secret }}" >> secrets.txt

Dynamic Secrets Demo

This example demonstrates fetching an AWS Dynamic Secret from Akeyless.

  fetch_aws_dynamic_secrets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Fetch AWS dynamic secrets
    
    permissions:
      id-token: write
      contents: read
      
    steps:
    - name: Fetch dynamic secrets from Akeyless
      id: fetch-dynamic-secrets
      uses: akeyless-community/[email protected]
      with:
        access-id: ${{vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID}}
        dynamic-secrets: |
          - name: "/path/to/dynamic/aws/secret"
            output-name: "aws_dynamic_secrets"
        access-type: jwt
        
# ********* KEY TAKEAWAY  ********* #
# STEP 1 - Export Dynamic Secret's keys to env vars
    - name: Export Secrets to Environment
      run: |
        echo '${{ steps.fetch-dynamic-secrets.outputs.aws_dynamic_secrets }}' | jq -r 'to_entries|map("AWS_\(.key|ascii_upcase)=\(.value|tostring)")|.[]' >> $GITHUB_ENV

# STEP 2 - You can now access each secret separately as environment variables
    - name: Verify Vars
      run: |
        echo "access_key_id: ${{ env.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}" >> secrets.txt
        echo "id: ${{ env.AWS_ID }}" >> secrets.txt
        echo "secret_access_key: ${{ env.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}" >> secrets.txt
        echo "security_token: ${{ env.AWS_SECURITY_TOKEN }}" >> secrets.txt
        echo "ttl_in_minutes: ${{ env.AWS_TTL_IN_MINUTES }}" >> secrets.txt
        echo "type: ${{ env.AWS_TYPE }}" >> secrets.txt
        echo "user: ${{ env.AWS_USER }}" >> secrets.txt

Rotated Secrets Demo

This example demonstrates fetching an AWS Rotated Secret from Akeyless.

  fetch_aws_rotated_secrets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Fetch AWS rotated secrets
    
    permissions:
      id-token: write
      contents: read
      
    steps:
    - name: Fetch rotated secrets from Akeyless
      id: fetch-rotated-secrets
      uses: akeyless-community/[email protected]
      with:
        access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
        access-type: jwt
      rotated-secrets: |
        - name: "/path/to/rotated/aws/secret"
          output-name: "aws_rotated_secrets"

SSH Certificates Demo

  fetch_ssh_secrets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Fetch ssh certificate

    permissions:
      id-token: write
      contents: read

    steps:
      - name: Fetch ssh certificates from Akeyless
        id: fetch-ssh-certificate
        uses: akeyless-community/[email protected]
        with:
          access-type: jwt
          ssh-certificate-secrets: |
            - name: "/path/to/ssh/secret1"
              output-name: "ssh_secret"
              cert-username: "ubuntu",
              public-key-data: "public_key_data",
            - name: "/path/to/ssh/secret2"
              output-name: "ssh_secret2"
              cert-username: "ubuntu",
              public-key-data: "public_key_data",

PKI Certificates Demo

  fetch_pki_secrets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Fetch pki certificate

    permissions:
      id-token: write
      contents: read

    steps:
      - name: Fetch pki certificates from Akeyless
        id: fetch-pki-certificates
        uses: akeyless-community/[email protected]
        with:
          access-type: jwt
          pki-certificate-secrets: |
            - name: "/path/to/pki/secret1"
              output-name: "pki_secret"
              csr-data-base64: "csr_data_base64"
            - name: "/path/to/pki/secret2"
              output-name: "pki_secret2"
              csr-data-base64: "csr_data_base64"

Parse JSON secrets

By default, the action sets the environment variable value to the entire JSON string in the secret value. Set parse-json-secrets to true to create environment variables for each key/value pair in the secret JSON.

If the JSON uses case-sensitive keys such as "name" and "Name", the action will have duplicate name conflicts. In this case, set parse-json-secrets to false and parse the JSON secret value separately.
You can still use the key and output-name for extracting a specific key with a specific name.
The default env name will be the path to the secret. If your secret name is /dev/test, the default name will be env.DEV_TEST_{key}.

For example, for a secret with JSON values:

    {
      "key1":"val1", 
      "key2":"val2"
    }

       with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: jwt
          static-secrets: |
           - name: "/path/to-secret"
           - name: "/path/to-secret"
             key: "key1"
             output-name: "SECRET"
          parse-json-secrets: true
     - name: Use Akeyless secret
       run: |
         echo "key1: ${{ env.PATH_TO-SECRET_KEY1 }} >> secrets.txt
         echo "key2: ${{ env.PATH_TO-SECRET_KEY2 }}" >> secrets.txt
         echo "key1: ${{ env.SECRET }}" >> secrets.txt

If you don't want the prefix to be the secret name you can add prefix-json-secrets with the prefix you would like:

       with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: jwt
          static-secrets: |
           - name: "/path/to-secret"
             prefix-json-secrets: "Mysql"
          parse-json-secrets: true
     - name: Use Akeyless secret
       run: |
         echo "val1 == ${{ env.MYSQL_KEY1 }}" >> secrets.txt
         echo "val2 == ${{ env.MYSQL_KEY2 }}" >> secrets.txt

Akeyless Setup

Authentication Methods

This action supports the following authentication methods. Pay close attention as for some authentication methods there are extra inputs needed aside from the access-type.

JWT Auth Method

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: jwt
          static-secrets: |
           - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
             output-name: "my_first_secret"
             key: "imp"

The default usage relies on using the GitHub JWT to login to Akeyless. To make this available, you have to configure it in your job workflow:

jobs:
  my_job:
    #---------Required---------#
    permissions: 
      id-token: write
      contents: read
    #--------------------------#

⚠️ If this is not present, the akeyless-action step will fail with the following error: Failed to login to Akeyless: Error: Failed to fetch Github JWT: Error message: Unable to get ACTIONS\_ID\_TOKEN\_REQUEST\_URL env variable.

AWS IAM Auth Method

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: aws_iam
          static-secrets: |
             - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
               output-name: "my_first_secret"
               key: "imp"

Azure AD Auth Method

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: azure_ad
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"

GCP Auth Method

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: gcp
          gcp-audience: "gcp-audience"
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"

K8s Auth Method

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: k8s
          k8s-auth-config-name: "k8s-auth-config-name"
          gateway-url: "gateway-url"
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"

Universal Identity Auth Method

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: universal_identity
          uid_token: "uid_token"
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"

Access Key Auth Method

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-key: ${{ secrets.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_KEY }}
          access-type: access_key
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"

Akeyless Token

        with:
          token: ${{ steps.JOB_NAME.outputs.token }}
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"

TLS Certificate

When TLS is configured on the Akeyless Gateway, you need to also pass the CA certificate (the CA certificate should be in PEM format):

        with:
          access-id: ${{ vars.AKEYLESS_ACCESS_ID }}
          access-type: universal_identity
          uid_token: "uid_token"
          ca-certificate: ${{ secrets.AKEYLESS_CA_CERTIFICATE }}
          static-secrets: |
            - name: "/akeyless-github-action/github-static-secret-json"
              output-name: "my_first_secret"
              key: "imp"

Setting up JWT Auth from the Akeyless Console

To configure Akeyless and grant your repositories the necessary permissions to execute this action:

Create a GitHub JWT Auth method in Akeyless if you don't already have one (you can safely share the auth method between repositories):
1. In Akeyless go to "Auth Methods" -> "+ New" -> "OAuth 2.0/JWT".
2. Specify a name (e.g. "GitHub JWT Auth") and location of your choice.
3. For the JWKS Url, specify https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com/.well-known/jwks
4. For the unique identifier, use repository. See note (1) below for more details.
5. You MUST click "Require Sub Claim on role association". This will prevent you from attaching this to a role without any additional checks. If you accidentally forgot to set sub-claim checks, then any GitHub runner owned by anyone would be able to authenticate to Akeyless and access your resources... that make this a critical checkbox. See the GitHub docs for more details.
Create an appropriate access role (if you don't already have one):
1. In Akeyless go to "Access Roles" -> "+ New"
2. Give it a name and location, and create it.
3. Find your new access role and click on it to edit it.
4. On the right side, under "Secrets & Keys", click the "Add" button to configure read access to any static or dynamic secrets you will fetch from your pipeline.
Attach your GitHub JWT Auth method to your role:
1. Once again, find the access role you created in step #2 above and click on it to edit it.
2. Hit the "+ Associate" button to associate your "GitHub JWT Auth" method with the role.
3. In the list, find the auth method you created in Step #1 above.
4. Add an appropriate sub-claim, based on the claims available in the JWT. See note (2) below for more details.
5. Save!

After following these steps, you'll be ready to use JWT Auth from your GitHub runners!

(1) Note: The unique identifier is mainly used for auditing/billing purposes, so there isn't one correct answer here. repository is a sensible default but if you are uncertain, contact support for more details.

(2) Note: Sub-claim checks allow Akeyless to grant access to specific workflows based on the claims that GitHub provides in the JWT. Using the example JWT from the documentation, you could set a sub-claim check in Akeyless, using the example below, to limit access to workflows that were triggered from the main branch in the octo-org/octo-repo repository:

repository=octo-org/octo-repo
ref=refs/heads/main

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Akeyless Authentication and fetching secrets