Let's face it. .env files are amazing. They have an easy-to-read syntax that stores all of our essential configurations into one file. Not only tha...
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vim ~/.gitignoreDo not think you will not make a mistake, be proactive and presume you will, we are only humans.
Edit: this will prevent adding to your project your IDE config files, environment and private keys
You shouldn't ignore the idea folder. you're supposed to commit almost all of it to the repo.
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Nope, thats what they say but is it a bad practice.
Each env had its own tweaks and sometimes diffenrent platforms, tasks, settings and folders. Each dev should have the liberty of using its own IDE in their own productive way.
Ah yes, let's not use the tool as instructed. That will go great.
Yeah, and they tell you exactly which things to exclude in order to get that.
You should include the idea folder. End of story.
No, sorry.
Do some research on the topic you will see that many other developers share my opinion. Do not blindly trust the IDE creators, for them is a business, for you is just a tool.
IDE's are local tools, they are not related to the project. A big project then will have
.vim
.idea
.eclipse
.atom
.vscode
folders. Where did you saw that?
You can also browse popular open source projects source code and see that most of them do not have IDE config files.
That's because devs want "clean" repos, but there is a JetBrains template, which will ignore USER settings, but you should still commit PROJECT setttings, as not all settings can be read from
.editorconfigor linting etc.... This will help other devs that uses that IDE to not waste time on configuring the IDE to get auto-format correct etc... Also VSCode has files that should be committed.That's pretty dangerous advice because it depends on how you configure your application.
I personally commit
.envfiles because they don't contain sensitive information and typically having settings important to being able to start up my app in development. I have a feeling just about anyone using Docker Compose would also commit.envfiles too since it's used for setting your project name.I reserve
.env.prodor other environment specific files for sensitive API keys and other things I wouldn't want to commit.It is not dangerous and also .env.prod is very specific.
You can always commit the files from gitignore, but you have to do it explicitly, so you avoid mistakes
--force.I just mean putting it into your main
.gitignorefile is dangerous because you run the risk of not committing essential settings to make your project work if it depends on.envbeing around.Using
--forceevery time they want to add a file isn't a viable solution IMO. That's a command you might run 50 times a day.In other words, you should add
.envon a per project basis when your project may have.envfiles that contain sensitive info, just like you would want to ignore any other files that have sensitive data.Awesome, just did this in all my repos.
We're glad to hear that!
Cheers! π₯ *clink*
Best and most useful solution. prevention before cure.
Just to clarity all this text above, which is misleading, the issue is not to commit the
.envfile!The issue is storing sensitive data in plain text -be it
.envor any other kind of file- inside the repository, either be public (as an obvious security measure) or private (as a double security measure).It's perfectly fine to have a
.envthat stores your DB user, password and model if that's meant to point to a local database in your computer (Docker-ized or not) for development purposes or an API key that's meant to work just in local environment within your app cluster. You can then override these values with the production -or any other public environment- ones in the pipeline with the sensitive data values stored in a vault or repository variables.Best regards
I totally agree with this. I should have been clearer in emphasizing this point. Of course, hindsight is 20-20 five years later (when this article was first published). π
This is actually my current stance on the subject nowadays. However, strictly out of abundance of caution, I still avoid committing an
.envfile into any of my repositories. It's more about the fact that I know I will be working with other people, so I just outright.gitignorepotentially sensitive files from the get-go. It is not to say that committing.envis inherently evil, but proactive measures are still better than reactive measures when it comes to computer security.true! π
When users access the front-end project, they can naturally capture all the content, so how can the front-end project prevent API key exposure? Is there no way?
The most effective way to combat this is to just never embed API keys in the front end. Instead, we use API calls (e.g.,
fetch) so that some back-end server somewhere performs the API request on behalf of the front end. The API keys thus remain secret in the back end. This is an unfortunately cumbersome but necessary measure.If so, access the API encryption interface through the fetch reappropriate back-end interface. So the API interface encryption on and from the front and back ends is meaningless.
What do you mean by encryption, by the way? Are you referring to API keys that are embedded inside JWTs? Or are you referring to the general pattern of encrypting API secrets before sending to the front end?
general pattern of encrypting API secrets before sending them to the front end
I suppose that is one possible way. Personally, though, I would still prefer just having a centralized server that acts as a proxy for privileged API calls.
Just to clarify for anyone reading, a
git revertwill not solve the problem: you'll still have the.envfile visible in your public git history. If you've accidentally committed a secret, you need to remove that commit completely.If you catch the problem immediately, you can do a
git reset HEAD^followed bygit push -f. This deletes the most recent commit and overwrites the remote Git history. If you realize too late what you've done, you'll need a slightly more complicated method (see this useful blog post for pointers).Of course, on the Internet this is all pretty optimistic; someone could have scraped your secrets while they were publicly visible, even if only for a handful of seconds. The only way to really get your security back is to go change all your secret keys and passwords.
Yup! That's true. If at any time you feel that you have been compromised, never hesitate to reset those keys and passwords. In fact, it should be the first thing you should do before messing up the commit history. The less time the API key is valid, the better it will be for everyone (except potential hijackers).
Not to mention that
git push -fopens the door to all kinds of accidents.Hm, I would recommend adding an
.env.samplefile in the repository. Instead of filling in the fields with real values, you can add placeholders, redactions, and "pseudo-values".Then, of course, this would have to be documented and explained in the appropriate
README.md.Or perhaps, you could even forgo the
.env.samplefile and declare the environment variables in theREADME.mditself, but I personally prefer the former because it is more explicit.I see no point in the general advice, not to commit a
.env-file per se: I do it frequently and wondered what this post is about.It is not about committing a standard configuration in your repo, which could be overriden e.g. by a
.env.local. It is about not storing secrets in your repository. That's another topic and indeed best practice.So my usage of
.envseems to differ: providing a sane default configuration, which can and should be overridden and does not contain any secrets whatsoever.For managing secrets in a repo there is an interesting approach by stackoverflow: github.com/StackExchange/blackbox
which unfortunately I had not the time trying, but looks interesting.
The only thing I don't like about doing this is that when I change the defaults, they now show up as a diff. On some of my smaller projects I SSH onto the server and just pull the latest changes, so if I've made a change to my default
.envfile I have to worry about conflicts. I can avoid this problem in production by having the defaults be my production settings, but then I constantly have a dirty file in development.The best solution to this in my opinion is to not commit
.envand instead commit a.env.example. Then all you have to do iscp .env.example .envand you have the exact same things as before but without a dirty file when you change settings.Hmmm. Interesting. I came into first contact with .env files via vuejs. It seems there, that you have a .env file which acts like your ".env.example" and could have a .env.local which contains overrides.
But doing some research that seems an uncommon practice π€
Mostly there is one .env and it isn't committed.
Yes, it's definitely okay to commit the
.envfile if and only if they contain general and not-so-sensitive information. Otherwise, the point of this article is to remind people that they should think twice before they commit.envfiles because of the serious ramifications that come with it.There's sooooooo... many unaware user be out there , anybody can literally bring their whole business to an end! π
I tried to talk with some of them and make them aware, but got no response for months..π
Seems like they're like,
You could always show them a demo of the amount of damage you can do if you had access to that "small"
.envfile. I'm sure they'll be alarmed after that.Be very careful when doing this as some wildly misguided company may accuse you of hacking and try and prosecute.
I'm sure he'll be informing them about the demo beforehand. π
@somedood , Yes Yes!
Will Do.
I've seen many juicy leaks there such as Google Cloud Platform Keys , Facebook Credentials , GitHub Credentials and even someone's phone number π
Hack responsibly! π
Just Proof-Of-Concept π
I need the
.envfile during build on CI how do I make sure GCP receives my .env file if I have not committed it on github ?/settings/secrets.envfile/settings/secrets) same in local setup ?To be honest, I am not exactly versed in the Google Cloud Platform. However, I do know they provide a (paid) Secrets Manager service that does exactly what you need in a secure manner. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be a "free" workaround.
But that doesn't mean other cloud platforms have this limitation. Heroku, for example, allows you to directly set environment variables in the app itself.
So at the moment, I can't offer you any solutions with GCP. I'm unfortunately not familiar with it.
cool. thanks
Why have it in your git directory at all? Most frameworks let you override the config location so set it to
~/.app-name/.envor similar. If you need to provide an example dummy config you can check in an.env.samplefile.Yes, that's true. At least for me, I think it's just easier to have a
.envfile because it requires minimal setup and messing around with global configurations.At least in Node.js, all you have to do is
npm installandrequirethe dotenv package. Then in your code, just invoke thedotenv.config()and it should all be running smoothly via the process.env object. This way just saves you from the little extra effort you have to do with the nitty-gritty configurations.But to each its own. Whatever workflow works the best for you, you should apply it, not because everyone does it but because you feel productive with it.
Got a question probably a dumb one :D. Let's say the configs in our .env are just for a client side application like react and it includes api keys and such (no database or backend user pass stuff). Why would we care about committing since after the build all the keys are going to be somewhere inside the built file as well? and its visible through the browser when user is working with the website?
First and foremost, that's not a dumb question! π
You are correct that it shouldn't really matter if the environment variables are truly meant to be deployed with the file bundles.
However, the real issue here is the fact that sensitive keys are publicized in the first place. Needless to say, this is not exactly a secure deployment strategy. Even if the bundles are minified and such, this is a potential attack surface nonetheless.
API keys must be stored and indirectly served via some in-house server-side API, never directly through the client-side code. Potential security risks include (but are not limited to) denial-of-service attacks, impersonation, and backdoor access to app internals. That's no fun!
Though, if the environment variables only include non-sensitive static build configurations and such (i.e. theming options, CSS variables, etc.), perhaps it may be alright to publicize them. Otherwise, you should be extra wary about this deployment strategyβif not reconsider it altogether.
Oh, and this doesn't just apply to auth and application keys from cloud providers. It can also apply to the credentials you use for demo and testing servers for your client-side app, and database credentials for server-side apps.
Take a look at a package I wrote on NPM: (envup). It allows you to version control the structure of your environment as a separate file making it easy for others to setup their own .env file without commiting any of the data to git.
I add on
~/.gitignore_global. π£π£That's good and all, but as @matthias mentioned, it's still important to add them to your repositories because other people will also work on them. They might not have configured their global
.gitignorelike you have, which might cause them to accidentally commit the.envfile.Itβs a good idea to put such things into your global
.gitignore.But keep in mind that you mostly work in projects with other people, so you have to put those things into your repositories
.gitignoretoo, to avoid that your co-workers commit secrets.oh thank you. :) I care this.
I faced the same issue because of our intern. He published
.envfile for everyone on the internet.The
.envfile contains mail, google cloud and bank API keys. It was really terrible.How did you guys manage the situation? Did everyone scramble to reset the API keys while others scrambled to clean up the working tree and commit history?
I regenerate the mail and bank API keys. I also bank added IP limit to bank API portal.
Our lead was so angry. I created a script to remove critical commit histories before we faced this situation (about 2 years ago). I ran that shell script.
But it was so dangerous. Normally we don't have published repositories.
I can say this was our fault.
I take it that the intern didn't stay there for long...
I agree 100% in any real project.
That said I have a repo on github right now, symfony4-impressions, that I explicitly intended to commit the .env and give to people. In this case I wanted people to have the foobar password for the docker mysql container so they can easily run the performance benchmarks to see for themselves if they wanted.
I noted this a few years ago, before ".env" became the norm, but the effect was the same. People were putting their OAuth keys into configuration files, committing them to git, and a bot search came across several thousand exposed keys just looking for Amazon's. Similar numbers probably would have been found with google and others.
In that case, I wanted to make sure that my users knew where to put their stuff, so I created a credentials.template file that showed the format, and that got committed, but my own credentials did not. One could do the same here by having a README.env.txt file to document what to do, and cat that file to the console in an npm post-install hook.
The negative of that, though necessary, is it means you're not distributing running code. They can't just pull your files down and npm start and everything works. They have to finish the init by creating their own files. It may also complicate automated testing systems that would have to be configured to provide that file before running.
If you have made this mistake already, one possible way to fix it is to interactive rebase back to the sha that introduced the problem, wipe the file and add the .gitignore line there, and then deal with the merge conflicts as it pushes the rest up if you ever had to touch that file again (either in format or in updating the data in it).
Of course, how much work that is depends on the age of your code (how many commits and how many branches).
If .env files are so popular, git should warn before such file is commited. Writing a validation could help millions of developers
Now that you mentioned it, I'm surprised that it hasn't been implemented yet.
.envis an anti-pattern to me, because it requires overhead to keep it secure.It seems to be quite a popular anti-pattern nowadays. π
Besides, adding one line to the
.gitignorefile shouldn't be that much of an overhead.And you can also use
dotenv-linterto lint your.envfiles for consistency and best practices: github.com/wemake-services/dotenv-...No problem, Rajesh! Thanks for reading the article! π
is it ok to commit on private repos?
Yes, it could be okay to commit there. At least it's not public. As long as you really trust the cloud service hosting your repository, then it should be fine. No guarantees, though. It's a risk you take when you put something in the internet.
Here's a relevant article.
This is really intricate and interesting. Thanks for sharing! It was a great read (yet very disturbing π¬ from a security standpoint).
Yup, pretty much! The best part about adding a sample file is the fact that it can also serve as documentation for environment variables. One can simply annotate and comment on the sample file.
110% this. Thank you for sharing Some Dood. And nice GitHub search results to boot! :)
Thank you! I appreciate it. On the note of the GitHub search results, I was really disturbed by how many commits are being made with a similar title. I just felt the need to write about it as a PSA and a friendly reminder to all that they shouldn't commit the
.envfile unless it's there for a justifiable reason, such as the case with @buphmin .I agree 100% in any real project.
That said I have a repo on github right now, symfony4-impressions, that I explicitly intended to commit the .env and give to people. In this case I wanted people to have the foobar password for the docker mysql container so they can easily run the performance benchmarks to see for themselves if they wanted.
Thank you for the tip on how to get my projects to the top of the search results...
As if it was fault of Mailgun... It's your friends fault and yours for giving him these credentials.
Wow. It makes me wonder what the hijacker did to rack up a bill of $600.
Oh, no. That's just really unfortunate. Do they still remind you to this day or did they terminate the service?
How typical of them. Hays... π€¦ββοΈ
Thoughts on this?
Encrypt and check your secrets into git
david karapetyan
I looked into this for a project a while ago. I think it's an interesting solution for securely sharing secrets among people who are authorized to configure production servers.
But I also believe that those secrets shouldn't be shared across the entire team to avoid disaster mentioned in some of the anecdotes in this thread, specifically the one about the intern publishing production keys in an .env file. That intern and other devs shouldn't have ever access to those keys in the first place.
I feel that anyone who needs to have access to 3rd party API credentials for local development should just try to generate their own, by signing up developer accounts with those 3rd party web services and registering their own API clients.
It's overhead. But it only needs to be done once and makes absolutely sure that a leak of such credentials is not going to cause any major issues.
In case there is no easy way to sign up yourself (e.g. payment processor APIs) an encrypted store via Git like that makes sense for sharing sandbox environment credentials.
Ideally I believe that .env files and similar configuration files that contain confidential production credentials should be stored in the (encrypted) storage of the CI server and only bundled on build & deploy. A single source of truth, and a single possible point of failure.
I agree with the post. It really comes down to resetting and revoking the validity of compromised API keys. Never mind messing up with the commit history; just leave it as is and reset those keys ASAP.