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Use GCP Secret Manager secrets in GitLab CI/CD

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You can use secrets stored in the Google Cloud (GCP) Secret Manager in your GitLab CI/CD pipelines.

The flow for using GitLab with GCP Secret Manager is:

  1. GitLab issues an ID token to the CI/CD job.
  2. The runner authenticates to GCP using the ID token.
  3. GCP verifies the ID token with GitLab.
  4. GCP issues a short-lived access token.
  5. The runner accesses the secret data using the access token.
  6. GCP checks IAM secret permission on the access token's principal.
  7. GCP returns the secret data to the runner.

To use GitLab with GCP Secret Manager, you must:

Configure GCP IAM Workload Identity Federation (WIF)

GCP IAM WIF must be configured to recognize ID tokens issued by GitLab and assign an appropriate principal to them. The principal is used to authorize access to the Secret Manager resources:

  1. In GCP Console, go to IAM & Admin > Workload Identity Federation.

  2. Select CREATE POOL and create a new identity pool with a unique name, for example gitlab-pool.

  3. Select ADD PROVIDER to add a new OIDC Provider to the Identity Pool with a unique name, for example gitlab-provider.

    1. Set Issuer (URL) to the GitLab URL, for example https://gitlab.com.
    2. Select Default audience, or select Allowed audiences for a custom audience, which is used in the aud for the GitLab CI/CD ID token.

  4. Under Attribute Mapping, create the following mappings, where:

    • attribute.X is the name of the attribute you want to be present on Google's claims.
    • assertion.X is the value to extract from the GitLab claim.
    Attribute (on Google) Assertion (from GitLab)
    google.subject assertion.sub
    attribute.gitlab_project_id assertion.project_id

Grant access to GCP IAM principal

After setting up WIF, you must grant the WIF principal access to the secrets in Secret Manager.

  1. In GCP Console, go to Security > Secret Manager.

  2. Select the name of the secret you wish to grant access to, to view the secret's details.

  3. From the PERMISSIONS tab, select GRANT ACCESS to grant access to the principal set created through the WIF provider. The external identity format is:

    principalSet://iam.googleapis.com/projects/PROJECT_NUMBER/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/POOL_ID/attribute.gitlab_project_id/GITLAB_PROJECT_ID

    In this example:

    • PROJECT_NUMBER: Your Google Cloud project number (not ID) which can be found in the Project's dashboard.
    • POOL_ID: The ID (not name) of the Workload Identity Pool created in the first section, for example gitlab-pool.
    • GITLAB_PROJECT_ID: The GitLab project ID found on the project overview page.

  4. Assign the role Secret Manager Secret Accessor.

Configure GitLab CI/CD to use GCP Secret Manager secrets

You must add these CI/CD variables to provide details about your GCP Secret Manager:

  • GCP_PROJECT_NUMBER: The GCP Project Number.
  • GCP_WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_FEDERATION_POOL_ID: The WIF Pool ID, for example gitlab-pool.
  • GCP_WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_FEDERATION_PROVIDER_ID: The WIF Provider ID, for example gitlab-provider.

Then you can use secrets stored in GCP Secret Manager in CI/CD jobs by defining them with the gcp_secret_manager keyword:

job_using_gcp_sm:
  id_tokens:
    GCP_ID_TOKEN:
      # `aud` must match the audience defined in the WIF Identity Pool.
      aud: https://iam.googleapis.com/projects/${GCP_PROJECT_NUMBER}/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/${GCP_WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_FEDERATION_POOL_ID}/providers/${GCP_WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_FEDERATION_PROVIDER_ID}
  secrets:
    DATABASE_PASSWORD:
      gcp_secret_manager:
        name: my-project-secret  # This is the name of the secret defined in GCP Secret Manager
        version: 1               # optional: default to `latest`.
      token: $GCP_ID_TOKEN

Use secrets from a different GCP project

Secret names in GCP are per-project. By default the secret named in gcp_secret_manager:name is read from the project specified in GCP_PROJECT_NUMBER.

To read a secret from a different project than the project containing the WIF pool, use the fully-qualified secret name formatted as projects/<project-number>/secrets/<secret-name>.

For example, if my-project-secret is in the GCP project number 123456789, then you can access the secret with:

job_using_gcp_sm:
  # ... configured as above ...
  secrets:
    DATABASE_PASSWORD:
      gcp_secret_manager:
        name: projects/123456789/secrets/my-project-secret  # fully-qualified name of the secret defined in GCP Secret Manager
        version: 1                                          # optional: defaults to `latest`.
      token: $GCP_ID_TOKEN

Troubleshooting

Error: The size of mapped attribute google.subject exceeds the 127 bytes limit

Long branch paths can cause a job to fail with this error, because the assertion.sub attribute becomes longer than 127 characters:

ERROR: Job failed (system failure): resolving secrets: failed to exchange sts token: googleapi: got HTTP response code 400 with body:
{"error":"invalid_request","error_description":"The size of mapped attribute google.subject exceeds the 127 bytes limit.
Either modify your attribute mapping or the incoming assertion to produce a mapped attribute that is less than 127 bytes."}

Long branch paths can be caused by:

  • Deeply nested subgroups.
  • Long group, repository, or branch names.

For example, for a gitlab-org/gitlab branch, the payload is project_path:gitlab-org/gitlab:ref_type:branch:ref:{branch_name}. For the string to remain shorter than 127 characters, the branch name must be 76 characters or fewer. This limit is imposed by Google Cloud IAM, tracked in Google issue #264362370.

The only fix for this issue is to use shorter names for your branch and repository.

WARNING: Not resolved: no resolver that can handle the secret warning

The Google Cloud Secret Manager integration requires at least GitLab 16.8 and GitLab Runner 16.8. This warning appears if the job is executed by a runner using a version earlier than 16.8.

On GitLab.com, there is a known issue causing SaaS runners to run an older version. As a workaround until this issue is fixed, you can register your own GitLab Runner with version 16.8 or later.