Secrets used as environment variables

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Metadata

Id: 3d658f8b-d988-41a0-a841-40043121de1e

Cloud Provider: k8s

Platform: Kubernetes

Severity: Low

Category: Secret Management

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Description

Containers and initContainers must not use secrets as environment variables. This rule flags environment variables that reference secrets via env[].valueFrom.secretKeyRef and envFrom[].secretRef in container specs. It reports an IncorrectValue issue including the resource name, spec path, and the specific key that is defined.

Compliant Code Examples

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: secret-env-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: mycontainer
    image: redis
  restartPolicy: Never

Non-Compliant Code Examples

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: secret-env-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: mycontainer
    image: redis
    env:
      - name: SECRET_USERNAME
        valueFrom:
          secretKeyRef:
            name: mysecret
            key: username
      - name: SECRET_PASSWORD
        valueFrom:
          secretKeyRef:
            name: mysecret
            key: password
  restartPolicy: Never
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: envfrom-secret
spec:
  containers:
  - name: envars-test-container
    image: nginx
    envFrom:
    - secretRef:
        name: test-secret