Add optional service-account-backed dynamic tokens to avoid per-request bot users

Open
  • Is something wrong?
#126 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
gitlab, go
Domain
api, authentication, authorization, backend

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing role lifecycle, project/group token issuance, lease revocation, and deletion behavior, then compare the constraints with related issue #117. Done means an explicit service-account mode supports idempotent provisioning, independent tokens, preserved scopes and TTLs, documented prerequisites and lifecycle behavior, and tests and documentation covering the acceptance criteria.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement

Problem

The plugin currently creates a GitLab project or group access token for every dynamic credential request. GitLab creates a new bot user for each of those tokens and retains the user for a configurable period after the token becomes inactive. Repeated credential requests therefore create identity churn and can clutter project or group membership.

Token rotation, as proposed in #117, does not fully solve this use case because rotating a token immediately revokes its predecessor. Concurrent jobs reading the same Vault role need independently revocable credentials that remain valid for their own leases.

Proposed feature

Add an opt-in role mode that uses a stable GitLab service account as the identity for dynamic credentials.

When a role is created or updated, the plugin should be able to:

  1. Create or locate a service account for the configured project or group.
  2. Persist the service account identifier with the role.
  3. Ensure that the service account has the configured project/group membership and access level.

When credentials are requested from that role, the plugin should create a new short-lived token for the existing service account rather than creating a new project/group access token and bot user.

The existing project/group access-token behavior should remain the default for backward compatibility.

An illustrative configuration could be:

token_type = "project-service-account"
service_account_name = "vault-{{ .role_name }}"

The exact option names and role schema are open for discussion.

Required behavior

  • Service-account provisioning is idempotent. Reapplying or updating a role reuses the same account.
  • Concurrent credential requests create independent tokens under the same service account.
  • Issuing or revoking one leased token does not revoke tokens held by other jobs.
  • Generated tokens preserve the configured scopes, TTL, and lease revocation behavior.
  • The plugin handles create/update races without producing duplicate service accounts.
  • Existing roles continue to use project/group access tokens unless the new mode is explicitly selected.
  • Errors clearly identify missing GitLab version, license, or permission prerequisites.
  • Role reads expose the managed service account identity without exposing secrets.
  • Role deletion has documented service-account lifecycle behavior. Destructive cleanup should require an explicit option or separate operation.

Acceptance criteria

  • Project-backed service-account tokens are supported on compatible GitLab versions.
  • Group-backed service-account tokens are supported where the GitLab API permits them.
  • Multiple simultaneous reads of one role return usable tokens associated with one service-account user.
  • Revoking one Vault lease leaves other active leases usable.
  • Reapplying the same role does not create another service account.
  • Unit and acceptance tests cover provisioning, concurrent issuance, revocation, updates, and deletion behavior.
  • Documentation covers permissions, GitLab-version requirements, migration, and rollback.

Design considerations

  • Should the plugin create the service account itself, or optionally accept the username/ID of a pre-provisioned account?
  • How should membership/access-level drift be reconciled?
  • What should happen if the configured account name already exists but was not created by this plugin?
  • Can this share a common token_type model with user, project, and group service accounts?

Related

  • #117 proposes rotating an existing project access token. Rotation is useful for other cases, but its immediate revocation semantics make it unsafe as the sole solution for parallel CI jobs.
Dominant language
Go
Stars
63
Forks
12
No merged PRs in 30d

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from splunk/vault-plugin-secrets-gitlab

All issues in splunk/vault-plugin-secrets-gitlab

Similar issues

More Go issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.