sops VS bfg-repo-cleaner

My script just sets up default .sops.yaml for https://github.com/getsops/sops

You can further edit .sops.yaml(eg have multiple of them) and decide how you split secrets in your directory tree to further customize who can decrypt the secrets.

It works pretty well for prod/dev splits, etc

Mozilla SOPS (Secrets OPerationS) is an open-source command-line tool for managing and storing secrets. It uses secure encryption methods to encrypt secrets at rest and decrypt them at runtime. SOPS supports a variety of key management systems, including AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, and PGP. It's particularly useful in a DevOps context where sensitive data like API keys, passwords, or certificates need to be securely managed and seamlessly integrated into application workflows.

Encrypted secrets thanks to SOPS and Age

We do the exact same thing to keep track of some credentials we use sops[1] and AWS KMS to separate credentials by sensitivity, then use the git differ to view the diffs between the encrypted secrets

Definitely not best practice security-wise, but it works well

[1] https://github.com/getsops/sops

For anyone new to SOPS like I was - https://github.com/getsops/sops

I've found this is largely solved by strictly separating plain config and secrets, and then having secrets pull from GCP secret manager / vault / whatever.

You can then commit all the config (including the secret identifiers) and it all just works so long as you're authenticated with your secret storage system.

We do this for the live configuration as well in line with Gitops and find it to work well.

If you don't want to use a cloud secret manager you can also use something like https://github.com/getsops/sops to commit the encrypted secrets safely

Basically, the simpler the better --just encrypt your secrets and check them in to version control.

We use SOPS[0] for this, and have found it to be pretty nice.

[0]: https://github.com/getsops/sops

The answer is that secrets shouldn't be stored in the git repo at all, but somewhere safe like a password manager or Mozilla's SOPS which people seem to love.

Unfortunately, the SOPS project is in some sort of a limbo state and there has been quite a long period with limited maintenance and unclear position from Mozilla. Despite the project being accepted into the CNCF, it's still unclear what will happen with it going forward.

So, this is a PSA that you can't simply delete the file and commit that. You must either use a tool like BFG Repo Cleaner which can scrub files out of your commit history or you could simply delete your repository and recreate it (easier, but you lose your commit history).

It shouldn't take a lot of time to modify. There is even a tool just for this scenario https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/

You need to git out the BFG: https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/

This method requires changes to be committed as usual in the regular project repository, and then committed again in the -docs repository. This is inelegant, but it provides clear distinction between private and public content. You cannot publish your regular repository without using git-filter-branch or some Git history rewriting software like BFG Repo-Cleaner. This would rewrite every commit in the history of the repo, removing all changes to the paths you don't wish to publish. This would change all the commit hashes and possibly other metadata – in short, it wouldn't be the same repository.

GFG Repo-Cleaner

You could use a repo filtering tool (e.g. BFG Repo-Cleaner) to clean up unintended information leak from your Git repository -- which retains the history timeline, but I believe it would rehash all the commits and render everything unsigned, which is probably not the desired outcome.