Secrets

Secrets are values that, if leaked, would require a security incident response: passwords, API keys, tokens, certificates, private keys. These never go in YAML config files or version control.

kora reads secrets from environment variables at runtime.

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Local Development

make setup generates a machine-local .env at the repository root. It is gitignored and never committed. It holds only DB_PASSWORD, REDIS_PASSWORD and BFF_SESSION_SECRET. The Postgres and Redis passwords are fixed local defaults; BFF_SESSION_SECRET is generated with openssl rand. Nothing needs editing before the platform runs.

Everything with a safe default lives elsewhere: compose settings in docker-compose.yml, in-cluster settings in deploy/reference/environments/local.yaml. .env.example is not a template to copy; it documents the optional overrides (Bedrock, port collisions).

make up reads .env, injects these values into the cluster's kora-secrets, and brings the platform up.

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Accessing Secrets in Code

Read secrets directly from the environment using os.Getenv. Never store them in a config struct or pass them through YAML.

go

clientID := os.Getenv("KORA_OIDC_CLIENT_ID")
if clientID == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("KORA_OIDC_CLIENT_ID is required")
}

Fail fast on startup if a required secret is missing, don't let the service start in a broken state.

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Multi-Line Secrets (RSA Keys)

RSA private keys are PEM-encoded and multi-line. Standard .env parsers do not reliably preserve newlines, and pem.Decode requires real newlines to parse PEM headers and footers.

For local development, make gen-signing-key writes the key to secrets/signing.key (gitignored). make up generates it automatically if absent, then loads it into the cluster's kora-secrets as the inline KORA_TOKEN_SIGNING_KEY.

bash

make gen-signing-key          # writes secrets/signing.key (gitignored)

For CI/production, secret managers (GitHub Actions secrets, Kubernetes Secrets, Vault) inject multi-line values with real newlines. Use the inline variable:

bash

KORA_TOKEN_SIGNING_KEY=-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEowIBAAKCAQEA...
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Priority: KORA_TOKEN_SIGNING_KEY_FILE is checked first. KORA_TOKEN_SIGNING_KEY is the fallback. If neither is set and APP_ENV=local, an ephemeral key is generated at startup (tokens do not survive a restart, and a warning is logged).

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Dex OIDC Credentials (Local Only)

Dex authenticates the local test user against glauth, an in-memory LDAP server, not against a static password list. The password hash is GLAUTH_DEV_PASSWORD_HASH, a sha256 of the literal password, defaulted in docker-compose.yml and rendered into config/glauth/config.cfg at container start.

Nothing to generate. The test user is dev@local.runkora.io with password password. Override the hash in .env if you want a different one.

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Secret Reference

Application

Variable	Where Set	Description
APP_ENV	.env for host-run binaries	Environment: local or production (the default). Not a secret but selects the {env}.yaml config layer. The chart does not set it.

Database

Variable	Where Set	Description
DB_PASSWORD	.env / secret manager	PostgreSQL password. Generated into .env by make setup (value kora), defaulted in docker-compose.yml.

Redis

Variable	Where Set	Description
REDIS_PASSWORD	.env / secret manager	Redis password. Required in all environments. Generated into .env by make setup (value kora), defaulted in docker-compose.yml.

Token Signing

Variable	Where Set	Description
KORA_TOKEN_SIGNING_KEY_FILE	code fallback	Path to an RSA private key PEM file (mode 600). Checked first by the code.
KORA_TOKEN_SIGNING_KEY	kora-secrets (local) / secret manager	Inline RSA private key PEM. Local dev generates secrets/signing.key with make gen-signing-key; make up injects it here.

OIDC / Federated Identity

Variable	Where Set	Description
KORA_OIDC_CLIENT_ID	.env / secret manager	OAuth2 client ID. For local Dex: kora-local.
KORA_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET	.env / secret manager	OAuth2 client secret. Empty for public clients (local Dex is a public client).
KORA_OIDC_ISSUER_URL	.env / secret manager	Runtime override for the OIDC issuer URL. Not strictly a secret, but can encode tenant IDs.

Dex (Local Dev Only)

Variable	Where Set	Description
GLAUTH_DEV_PASSWORD_HASH	docker-compose.yml default	sha256 of the local test user's password. Override in .env to change it.

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Production

In deployed environments, inject secrets via your platform's secret mechanism:

• Kubernetes: Secret objects mounted as environment variables or projected volumes
• AWS: Secrets Manager or Parameter Store via the pod's IAM role
• GCP: Secret Manager with Workload Identity
• HashiCorp Vault: Agent sidecar injection

The application code is identical regardless: it always reads os.Getenv.

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Adding a New Secret

1. Add os.Getenv("YOUR_VAR") with a fail-fast check in the relevant service initializer
2. If it is machine-local, generate it into .env in the env target in the Makefile, and wire it into kora-secrets via scripts/cluster/create-secrets.sh
3. Add the key to the kora.platformEnv key list of each workload that reads it (charts/kora/templates/<service>/deployment*.yaml, or migrate/job.yaml) and to the expected keys in backend/internal/platform/config/chart_secrets_test.go. A pod receives only the kora-secrets keys listed there
4. If it is an optional override, document it in .env.example
5. Add it to this reference table above
6. Add it to the relevant deployment secret store for staging/production

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Reference

• config.md: YAML-based configuration for non-secret values
• contributing/local-development.md: Full local setup walkthrough
• yaml-file-based-configuration: Configuration system design
• oidc-provider-abstraction-and-local-identity-provider: OIDC provider abstraction
• SECURITY.md: reporting vulnerabilities