• Background
• API Overview
  • Basic Operations
  • Current Active Versions
  • Deleting Values
• Basic Usage
• Migrating to Setec
• Operations and Maintenance
  • Secret Rotation
  • Automatic Updates
  • Bootstrapping and Availability
• Testing
• API documentation
• Running a setec server

Programs in production often need access to passwords, API keys, parameterized connection URLs, and other sensitive information (hereafter, secrets) at runtime. Securely deploying secrets in production complicates operations, and typically involves a combination of tedious manual intervention (e.g., copying secrets out of secure storage at startup), or integrating with complex secrets management infrastructure (usually specific to the deployment environment).

Setec comprises a lightweight HTTP-based API and a corresponding server, that allows programs running on a tailnet to securely fetch secrets at runtime. Access to secrets is governed by the tailnet's policy document, and the server maintains secrets in encrypted storage, keeps an audit log of accesses, and manages periodic backups.

The setec server integrates with existing key-management infrastructure to bootstrap its own deployment (as of 24-Sep-2023, AWS KMS is supported). Once the server is running on a tailnet, other programs can use it to access their production secrets with a basic WireGuard-encrypted HTTP request, rather than having to distribute secrets via files, environment variables, or manual operator intervention.

In addition to reducing deployment toil, this also helps reduce the attack surface for managing secrets in third-party deployment environments: All the secrets are stored in one place, with access controls and audit logs to allow forensics in the event of a compromise.

A secret in setec is a named collection of values. Each value is an arbitrary byte string identified by an integer version number.

The setec API defines the following basic operations:

• The get method retrieves the value of a single version of a secret. Clients use this method to obtain the secrets they need in production.

• The info and list methods report the names and available versions (but not the values) of secrets accessible to the caller.

• The put method creates or adds a new value to a secret. The server assigns and reports a version number for the value.

• At any time, one version of the secret is designated as its current active version. The active version is reported by default from the get method if the caller does not specify a specific version.

• When a secret is first created, its initial value (version 1) becomes its current active version.

• Thereafter, the activate method must be used to update the current active version. This ensures the operator of the service has precise control over which version of a secret should be used at a time.

• The delete-version method deletes a single version of a secret. This method will not delete the current active version.

• The delete method deletes all the versions of a secret, removing it entirely from the service.

All of the methods of the setec API are HTTPS POST requests. Calls to the API must include a Sec-X-Tailscale-No-Browsers: setec header. This prevents browser scripts from initiating calls to the service. The examples below assume you have a setec server running at secrets.example.ts.net on your tailnet.

Go programs can use the setec client library provided in this repository. The API supports any language, however, so the examples below are written using the curl command-line tool.

A program that wishes to fetch a secret at runtime does so by issuing an HTTPS POST request to the /api/get method of the secrets service.

For example:

curl -H sec-x-tailscale-no-browsers:setec -H content-type:application/json -X POST \
  https://secrets.example.ts.net/api/get -d '{"Name": "prod/myprogram/secret-name"}'

The "Name" field specifies which secret to fetch. The name must be non-empty, but is otherwise not interpreted by the service, and you should choose names that make sense for your environment. Here we're using a basic path layout, grouping secrets by deployment environment (dev vs. prod) and program.

If the caller has access to the secret named prod/myprogram/secret-name, the server will return the current active version of this secret, e.g.,

{"Value":"aGVsbG8sIHdvcmxk","Version":1}

The secret Value is base64-encoded (in this case, the string "hello, world") and the Version is an integer indicating the sequential version number of this secret value. New versions of a secret are added by calling /api/put and any existing version can be set as the "active" version of the secret.

This repository also defines a setec command-line tool, written in Go, that can be used to call the API from scripts. To install it, run:

go install github.com/tailscale/setec/cmd/setec@latest

If for some reason you do not want to use the CLI directly, the following shell function is roughly equivalent for the purposes of these examples:

# Usage: setec_get <secret-name>
# This assumes setec resides at "secrets.example.ts.net".
# Roughly equivalent to "setec get <secret-name>" using the CLI.
setec_get() {
  local name="$1"
  curl -s https://secrets.example.ts.net/api/get -X POST --fail \
    -H sec-x-tailscale-no-browsers:setec -H content-type:application/json \
    -d '{"name":"'"$name"'"}' \
  | jq -r '.Value|@base64d'
}

When migrating existing programs to use setec, there are two main patterns of use you are likely to encounter: Environment variables, and key files.

The examples below are written as bash scripts, and make use of the setec command-line tool.

In practice most interesting programs will be written in a more structured language, the goal of using bash here is to illustrate the plumbing in a generic way.

Environment variables are often used to plumb secrets to programs running in containers. Typically the host allows you to add secrets to a store they manage, and to associate them with environment variables that they set up when starting up a container on your behalf. From the perspective of your program, the environment variable is ambient.

For example, the following script expects EXAMPLE_API_KEY to be defined.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

call_api() {
   curl -s https://api.example.com/v1/method --url-query "q=$@" \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${EXAMPLE_API_KEY}"
}

# ...

To replace this usage, load EXAMPLE_API_KEY by calling setec:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

# Here we assume the secret name is "prod/script/example-api-key".
EXAMPLE_API_KEY="$(setec -s https://secrets.example.ts.net get prod/script/example-api-key)"

call_api() {
   curl -s https://api.example.com/v1/method --url-query "q=$@" \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${EXAMPLE_API_KEY}"
}

# ...

Key files are sometimes used to plumb secrets to programs running in VMs or on colocated physical machines. Typically key files will be stored in a central secret manager and deployed to the VM or hardware using tools like Ansible or Chef. From the perspective of your program, the secret is a plain file at a known path on the local filesystem.

For example, the following script expects /secrets/example-api-key to contain the API key for a service:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

readonly EXAMPLE_API_KEY="$(cat /secrets/example-api-key)"

call_api() {
   curl -s https://api.example.com/v1/method --url-query "q=$@" \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${EXAMPLE_API_KEY}"
}

# ...

To replace this usage, load EXAMPLE_API_KEY by calling setec:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

# Here we assume the secret name is "prod/script/example-api-key".
readonly EXAMPLE_API_KEY="$(setec -s https://secrets.example.ts.net prod/script/example-api-key)"

call_api() {
   curl -s https://api.example.com/v1/method --url-query "q=$@" \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${EXAMPLE_API_KEY}"
}

# ...

This section discusses some common service operation and maintenance tasks that interact with secrets management, and how they interact with setec.

Sometimes secrets need to be rotated. For example, if an API credential expires or is compromised, the programs that depend on that credential will need to be updated to use a new value.

The simplest way to rotate secrets managed by setec is for the operator to install a new version of the secret, mark that version as active, and restart or redeploy the programs that use that secret so they will pick up the latest version. For example, using the setec command-line tool, suppose we have:

# HTTP: POST /api/info
setec info dev/hello-world

This will print the name of the secret, along with the version numbers that exist and which one is active:

Name:           dev/hello-world
Active version: 7
Versions:       1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

In this example we see that the dev/hello-world secret has 7 versions and version 7 is currently active. To add a new version, use setec put:

# HTTP: POST /api/put
setec put dev/hello-world

This will prompt you for the new secret version:

Enter secret: ****
Confirm secret: ****
Secret saved as "dev/hello-world", version 8

At this point, version 8 exists, but version 7 is still active. To activate version 8, write:

# HTTP: POST /api/activate
setec activate dev/hello-world 8

Now, any client that fetches the active version of dev/hello-world will get this new value instead.

The example above shows how to simply rotate a secret, but that still requires all the programs which depend on that secret to be restarted or redeployed to pick up the new value. That is fine for batch processing or low-volume services that do not receive a lot of traffic, but may be disruptive for servers with a larger active query load.

A program that does not wish to restart to pick up new secret values can poll the secrets API periodically, to see whether a new version is available. To do this, the request to the /api/get method may include the current version the client is using, and set the "UpdateIfChanged" flag to true:

{"Name":"dev/hello-world", "Version":7, "UpdateIfChanged":true}

If the current active version of the secret still matches what the client requested, the server will report 304 Not Modified, indicating to the client that it still (already) has the active version. This allows the client to check for an update without sending secret values over the wire except when needed, and does not trigger an audit-log record unless the server reveals the value of a secret to the client, or the permissions have changed (causing the client to be denied access).

The Go client library provides a setec.Store type that handles automatic updates using this polling mechanism, but the same logic can be implemented in any language. In Go, this looks like:

import "github.com/tailscale/setec/client/setec"

func main() {
   // Construct a setec.Store that tracks a set of secrets this program needs.
   // This will block until all the requested secrets are available.
   // Thereafter, in the background, it will poll for new versions at
   // approximately the given interval.
   st, err := setec.NewStore(context.Background(), setec.StoreConfig{
      Client: setec.Client{Server: "https://secrets.example.ts.net"},
      Secrets: []string{
         "prod/myprogram/secret-1",
         "prod/myprogram/secret-2",
      },
      PollInterval: 24*time.Hour,
   })
   if err != nil {
      log.Fatalf("NewStore: %v", err)
   }

   // Fetch a secret from the store. A setec.Secret is a handle that always
   // delivers the current value, automatically updated as new versions become
   // available from the server.
   apiKey := st.Secret("prod/myprogram/secret-1")

   cli := someservice.NewClient("username", apiKey.Get())
   // ...
}

Alternatively, you can obtain a setec.Updater, which uses a user-provided callback to update a local value whenever a new version of a secret becomes available. An updater is safe for concurrent use by multiple goroutines.

For example:

// Construct an updater, given a callback that takes a secret value and returns
// a new someservice client using that secret.
client, err := setec.NewUpdater(ctx, store, "secret/name", func(secret []byte) (*svc.Client, error) {
   return svc.NewClient("username", secret)
})
if err != nil {
   return fmt.Errorf("initialize client: %w", err)
}

// Whenever you need a client, call the Get method:
rsp, err := client.Get().Method(ctx, args)
// ...

The updater constructs the initial client by invoking the callback with the current secret value when NewUpdater is called. Thereafter, calls to u.Get() will return the same client until the secret changes. When that happens, Get invokes the callback again with the new secret value, to make a fresh client. If an error occurs while updating the client, the updater keeps returning the previous value.

Ordinarily a Store will automatically update secret values in the background. If a program needs to explicitly refresh the values of secrets at a specific time (for example, in response to an operator signal or other event) it may explicitly call the Store value's Refresh method, which effects a poll of all known secrets synchronously. It is safe for the client to do this concurrently with a background poll; the store will coalesce the operations.

A reasonable concern when fetching secrets from a network service is what happens if the secrets service is not reachable when a program needs to fetch a secret. A good answer depends on the nature of the program: Batch processing tools can usually afford to wait and retry until the service becomes available. Interactive services, by contrast, may not be able to tolerate waiting.

To minimize the impact of a secrets server being temporarily unreachable, a program should fetch all desired secrets at startup and cache them (typically in memory) while running. If the secrets service is unreachable when the program first starts, it should wait and retry as necessary, or fail the startup process. Once the program has initial values for all its desired secrets, it can poll for new values in the background.

This ensures that even if the secrets server is occasionally unreachable, the program always has a good value for each secret, even if one that is (temporarily) slightly stale. The Go client library's setec.Store type implements this logic automatically (see the example above).

A program that needs be able to start immediately, even when the secrets server is unavailable, can trade a bit of security for availability by caching the active versions of the secrets it needs in persistent storage (e.g., a local file). When the program start or restarts, it can fall back to the cached values if the secrets service is not immediately available. The Go client library's setec.Store type supports this kind of caching as an optional feature, and the same logic can be implemented in any language.

In Go, you can enable a file cache using setec.NewFileCache:

// Create or open a cache associated with the specified file path.
fc, err := setec.NewFileCache("/data/secrets.cache")
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("creating cache: %w", err)
}
st, err := setec.NewStore(ctx, setec.StoreConfig{
    Client:       setec.Client{Server: "https://secrets.example.ts.net"},
    Secrets:      []string{"secret1", "secret2", "secret3"},
    PollInterval: 12 * time.Hour,
    Cache:        fc,
})
// ...

With the cache enabled, the store will automatically persist new secrets fetched from the server into the cache as they become available. Morever, when the store is created, the store will not block waiting for the server if all the requested secrets already have a version stored in the cache.

Enabling a file cache represents a security tradeoff: The cache records all the program's secret values to local storage, which means they can be read by (other) programs and users with access to that storage. In return, however, the program can start up immediately using cached data, even if the secrets server is not reachable when it launches.

In some cases, you may need to run a program entirely without access to a secrets server. For example, in standalone testing and bootstrapping it may be impractical to set up a secrets service, or you may want to deploy the same program across different environments where a secrets service may or may not be present.

To support these cases, the Go setec package provides a FileClient type that can be plugged into a setec.Store. Unlike the normal setec.Client, a FileClient does not use the network at all, but vends secrets read from a plaintext JSON file on the local filesystem.

To use this, construct a Store using a FileClient instead:

fc, err := setec.NewFileClient("/data/secrets.json")
if err != nil {
   return fmt.Errorf("creating file client: %w", err)
}
st, err := setec.NewStore(ctx, setec.StoreConfig{
   Client:  fc,
   Secrets: []string{"svc/secret1", "svc/secret2"},
})

As input, the FileClient expects a file containing a JSON message like:

{
   "svc/secret1": {
      "secret": {"Version": 1, "Value": "dGhlIGtub3dsZWRnZSBpcyBmb3JiaWRkZW4="}
   },
   "svc/secret2": {
      "secret": {"Version": 5, "TextValue": "eat your vegetables"}
   }
}

The object keys are the secret names, and the values have the structure shown. Binary secret values are base64 encoded as "Value", or if you are constructing a secrets file by hand you may include plain text secrets as "TextValue" instead.

A program that may be used in multiple environments can choose which client to use at startup, and otherwise the store will work the same:

var client setec.StoreClient
if *secretsAddr != "" {
   client = setec.Client{Server: *secretsAddr}
} else if fc, err := setec.NewFileClient(*localSecrets); err != nil {
   log.Fatalf("Open file client: %v", err)
} else {
   client = fc
}

st, err := setec.NewStore(ctx, setec.StoreConfig{
   Client: client,
   // ... other options as usual
})

Although the two are related, a FileClient differs from the cache mechanism described in the previous section. With a cache enabled, a store loads secrets from the cache file at startup, but otherwise communicates with a secrets service in the usual way.

With a FileClient, however, the store does not access the network at all: It reads the specified file once at startup, and only serves those exact secret values.

The two mechanisms are intended to be complementary. For example, you could bootstrap a new deployment using the following steps:

• Create a secrets file seeded with the initial secrets your program needs.

• Start up a store with a FileClient that uses your seed file. This lets you get your program working even if your secrets server is not yet set up.

• When you are ready to switch to a secrets server, you can enable a cache, and the store will prime the cache with the secrets from your seed file.

• Then, when you switch from a FileClient to a regular Client, you will have an already-primed cache available (which can be helpful as you are working out the inevitable quirks of a new service configuration).

The opposite is also true: By design, the format of the cache files can also be used directly as the input to a FileClient if you need to spin up a new instance of an existing server somewhere else.

For programs written in Go, the setectest package provides in-memory implementations of the setec server and its database for use in writing tests. The servers created by this package use the same implementation as the production server (setec server in the CLI), but use a stub implementation of encryption (so they do not require an external KMS).

A setectest.Server can be used with the httptest package to hook up a real, working setec client and/or store in tests:

// Create a new database and add some secrets to it.
db := setectest.NewDB(t, nil)
db.MustPut(db.Superuser, "alpha", "ok")
db.MustPut(db.Superuser, "bravo", "yes")
db.MustPut(db.Superuser, "bravo", "no")

// Create a setec server using that database.
ts := setectest.NewServer(t, db, nil)

// Stand up an in-memory HTTP server exporting ts.
hs := httptest.NewServer(ts.Mux)
defer hs.Close()

// Start a setec.Store talking to this server.
st, err := setec.NewStore(context.Background(), setec.StoreConfig{
    // Note the client here uses the httptest URL and client.
    Client:  setec.Client{Server: hs.URL, DoHTTP: hs.Client().Do},
    Secrets: []string{"alpha", "bravo"},
})
if err != nil {
    t.Fatalf("NewStore: %v", err)
}
// ... the rest of the test