Accesses to cloud providers using insecure long-term credentials

Rule Details

Cortex AppSec Rule ID	APPSEC_CICD_75
Category	Credential Hygiene
Severity	MEDIUM

Impact

Long-term credentials used by automated workflows to authenticate to cloud or external services are stored as secrets in the repository. This increases the potential impact of credential theft, as stolen credentials can be used long after a workflow run is complete. In some platforms, it may not be possible to restrict access to stored secrets based on branch protections. Any user with sufficient permissions to modify repository code could potentially expose these secrets.

Recommended Solution - Buildtime

Since October 2021, GitHub supports the OIDC (OpenID Connect) authentication protocol to replace long-term credentials with short-lived access tokens. Using OIDC, the GitHub Actions workflow can request a short-lived token directly from the cloud provider, which expires automatically as the workflow run ends. In addition, OIDC allows more granular control over how secrets can be used. For example, it is possible to filter access to tokens when the request originates in specific protected branches or environments. For more information about using OIDC in GitHub refer to: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/deployment/security-hardening-your-deployments/about-security-hardening-with-openid-connect.