This topic discusses support for event notifications in Secret Manager.
Overview
Event notifications sends information about changes to your secrets and secret versions to Pub/Sub. These notifications can be used to trigger arbitrary workflows, such as restarting an application when a new secret version is added, or notifying security engineers when a secret is deleted. For more information on how to use these notifications to trigger workflows, see the Pub/Sub documentation.
How event notifications work in Secret Manager
Secrets can be configured with a list of up to 10 Pub/Sub topics. Whenever an operation is performed that modifies the secret or one of its versions, Secret Manager will automatically publish a message to each of the Pub/Sub topics on that secret. Get, List, and Access calls do not result in message publications.
Pub/Sub messages have a set of "attribute" key-value pairs containing metadata about the event, as well as a "data" field containing a full JSON serialization of the Secret or SecretVersion resource which was created or modified. This JSON is a UTF-8 encoded string that represents the Secret or SecretVersion resource in exactly the form specified by the Secret Manager public API, encoded in JSON as specified in the proto3 JSON Mapping.
Event types
The following is a list of event types supported by Secret Manager:
Event type | Description |
---|---|
SECRET_CREATE |
Sent when a new secret is successfully created. |
SECRET_UPDATE |
Sent when a new secret is successfully updated. |
SECRET_DELETE |
Sent when a secret is deleted, either because of a user-initiated request or secret expiration. |
SECRET_VERSION_ADD |
Sent when a new secret version is successfully added. |
SECRET_VERSION_ENABLE |
Sent when a secret version is enabled. |
SECRET_VERSION_DISABLE |
Sent when a secret version is disabled. |
SECRET_VERSION_DESTROY |
Sent when a secret version is destroyed. |
SECRET_VERSION_DESTROY_SCHEDULED |
Sent when a destruction delay duration is configured on the secret and the user attempts to destroy a secret version. |
SECRET_ROTATE |
Sent when it is time to rotate a secret. See Creating and managing rotation policies on secrets for more information. |
TOPIC_CONFIGURED |
This is a test message with no body or attributes other than
A
Whenever topics are updated on a secret, a |
Notification format
Notifications sent to the Pub/Sub topic consist of two parts:
- Attributes: A set of key:value pairs describing the event.
- Data: A string that contains the metadata of the changed object.
Attributes
Attributes are key:value pairs contained in notifications sent by
Secret Manager to your Pub/Sub topic. All notifications other than TOPIC_CONFIGURED
test messages always
contain the following set of key:value pairs, regardless of the notification's
data:
Example | Description | |
---|---|---|
eventType |
SECRET_CREATE |
The type of event that has just occurred. See Event types for a list of possible values. |
dataFormat |
JSON_API_V1 |
The format of the object data. |
secretId |
projects/p/secrets/my-secret |
The full resource name of the secret on which the event occurred. |
timestamp |
2021-01-20T11:17:45.081104-08:00 |
The time the event occurred. |
In addition, notifications sometimes contain the following set of key:value pairs:
Example | Description | |
---|---|---|
versionId |
projects/p/secrets/my-secret/versions/456 |
The name of the secret version on which the event occurred.
This is only present on
|
deleteType |
REQUESTED |
Whether the delete was requested by a user (REQUESTED )
or due to secret expiration (EXPIRATION ). Only present on
SECRET_DELETE event notifications.
|
Data
The data field is a UTF-8 string that contains the metadata of the changed object. Data is either a Secret or Secret Version.
For SECRET_DELETE
notifications, the metadata contained in the data field represents
the object metadata as it was before the delete. For all other notifications, the metadata included in the
data field represents the object metadata after the
change occurs.
Limitations
Event notifications is available only in the Secret Manager v1
API and Google Cloud CLI.
Before you begin
You may choose to store all resources in the same project or to store secrets and Pub/Sub topics in separate projects. Complete the following prerequisites to set up Secret Manager and Pub/Sub:
Secret Manager:
- Create or use an existing project to hold your Secret Manager resources.
- If necessary, complete the steps mentioned in the Enable the Secret Manager API page of the Secret Manager guide.
Pub/Sub:
- Create or use an existing project to hold your Pub/Sub resources.
- If necessary, enable the Pub/Sub API.
Authenticate to Google Cloud:
$ gcloud auth login --update-adc
Create a service agent identity
You need to create a service agent identity for each project that requires secrets with event notifications.
To create a service identity with Google Cloud CLI, run the following command:
$ gcloud beta services identity create \
--service "secretmanager.googleapis.com" \
--project "PROJECT_ID"
The previous command returns a service account name, using the following format:
service-PROJECT_NUMBER@gcp-sa-secretmanager.iam.gserviceaccount.com
You will grant this service account permission to publish on the Pub/Sub topics which will be configured on your secrets.
Save the service account name as an environment variable:
# This is from the output of the command above
$ export SM_SERVICE_ACCOUNT="service-...."
The environment variables for the Secret Manager project, Pub/Sub project, and Secret Manager service account must be set the entire time you are following this procedure.
Create Pub/Sub topics
Follow the Pub/Sub quickstart to create topics in your Pub/Sub project in the Google Cloud console. Alternatively, you can create topics with Google Cloud CLI as in this example.
$ gcloud pubsub topics create "projects/PUBSUB_PROJECT_ID/topics/PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME"
Repeat this multiple times if you want to create multiple Pub/Sub topics on the secret.
Grant the service account for Secret Manager permission to publish on the topics just created. This can be done through the Google Cloud console or with Google Cloud CLI. The following command grants the Pub/Sub Publisher role (roles/pubsub.publisher
) on the my-topic
Pub/Sub topic to the service account.
$ gcloud pubsub topics add-iam-policy-binding PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME \
--member "serviceAccount:${SM_SERVICE_ACCOUNT}" \
--role "roles/pubsub.publisher"
Create Pub/Sub subscriptions
In order to view the messages published to a topic, you must also create a subscription to the topic. Follow the Pub/Sub quickstart to create subscriptions in your Pub/Sub project in the Google Cloud console. Alternatively, you can create subscriptions with Google Cloud CLI as in this example.
$ gcloud pubsub subscriptions create "projects/PUBSUB_PROJECT_ID/subscriptions/PUBSUB_SUBSCRIPTION_NAME" \
--topic "projects/PUBSUB_PROJECT_ID/topics/PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME"
Create a secret with topics configured
Create a secret with a list of up to 10 topics configured. All topics configured on a secret will receive event notifications when the secret or one of its versions is changed. The following command creates a secret with my-topic
configured.
gcloud
To use Secret Manager on the command line, first Install or upgrade to version 378.0.0 or higher of the Google Cloud CLI. On Compute Engine or GKE, you must authenticate with the cloud-platform scope.
$ gcloud secrets create SECRET_ID --topics TOPIC_NAME
API
These examples use curl to demonstrate using the API. You can generate access tokens with gcloud auth print-access-token. On Compute Engine or GKE, you must authenticate with the cloud-platform scope.
$ curl "https://secretmanager.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/secrets?secretId=SECRET_ID" \
--request "POST" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
--data-binary @- <<EOF
{
"replication":{
"automatic":{}
},
"topics":{
"name": "TOPIC_NAME"
}
}
EOF
Update secret topics
Modify the Pub/Sub topics configured on a secret by updating the secret with the new Pub/Sub topic resource names. With Google Cloud CLI you can add or remove one or more topics from a secret, as well as clear all topics from the secret.
Add topics
Adds one or more topics to a secret. Adding a topic which is already present will have no effect.
$ gcloud secrets update "SECRET_ID" \
--project "PROJECT_ID" \
--add-topics "projects/PUBSUB_PROJECT_ID/topics/my-topic-2,projects/PUBSUB_PROJECT_ID/topics/PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME"
Remove topics
Removes one or more topics from a secret. Removing a topic which is not present will have no effect.
$ gcloud secrets update "SECRET_ID" \
--project "PROJECT_ID" \
--remove-topics "projects/PUBSUB_PROJECT_ID/topics/PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME,projects/PUBSUB_PROJECT_ID/topics/PUBSUB_OTHER_TOPIC_NAME"
Clear topics
Remove all topics from a secret.
$ gcloud secrets update SECRET_ID \
--project "PROJECT_ID" \
--clear-topics
Consume event notifications with Cloud Run functions
Event notifications can be used to trigger arbitrary workflows by creating Cloud Run functions to consume the Pub/Sub messages. See the Cloud Run functions documentation for a full guide. The following sample code is for a cloud function that prints eventType, secretId and metadata whenever an event is published to the topic. List of all Event Types for Secret Manager can be found here.
C#
To run this code, first set up a C# development environment and install the Secret Manager C# SDK. On Compute Engine or GKE, you must authenticate with the cloud-platform scope.
using CloudNative.CloudEvents; using Google.Cloud.Functions.Framework; using Google.Events.Protobuf.Cloud.PubSub.V1; using System; using System.Threading; using System.Threading.Tasks; // Triggered from a message on a Cloud Pub/Sub topic. // The printed value will be visible in Cloud Logging // (https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/monitoring/logging). namespace PubSubSample { public class Function : ICloudEventFunction<MessagePublishedData> { public Task HandleAsync(CloudEvent cloudEvent, MessagePublishedData data, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { string eventType = data.Message.Attributes["eventType"]; string secretId = data.Message.Attributes["secretId"]; string secretMetadata = data.Message.TextData; Console.WriteLine($"Received {eventType} for {secretId}. New metadata: {secretMetadata}."); return Task.CompletedTask; } } }
Go
To run this code, first set up a Go development environment and install the Secret Manager Go SDK. On Compute Engine or GKE, you must authenticate with the cloud-platform scope.
Java
To learn how to install and use the client library for Secret Manager, see Secret Manager client libraries.
To authenticate to Secret Manager, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.
Node.js
To run this code, first set up a Node.js development environment and install the Secret Manager Node.js SDK. On Compute Engine or GKE, you must authenticate with the cloud-platform scope.
/** * Triggered from a message on a Cloud Pub/Sub topic. * The printed value will be visible in Cloud Logging * (https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/monitoring/logging). * * @param {!Object} event Event payload. * @param {!Object} context Metadata for the event. */ exports.smEventsFunction = (event, context) => { const eventType = event.attributes.eventType; const secretID = event.attributes.secretId; const secretMetadata = Buffer.from(event.data, 'base64').toString(); console.log(`Received ${eventType} for ${secretID}. New metadata: ${secretMetadata}.`); };
Python
To run this code, first set up a Python development environment and install the Secret Manager Python SDK. On Compute Engine or GKE, you must authenticate with the cloud-platform scope.
Ruby
To run this code, first set up a Ruby development environment and install the Secret Manager Ruby SDK. On Compute Engine or GKE, you must authenticate with the cloud-platform scope.
require "functions_framework" require "base64" # Triggered from a message on a Cloud Pub/Sub topic. # The printed value will be visible in Cloud Logging # (https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/monitoring/logging). FunctionsFramework.cloud_event "sm_events_function" do |event| message = event.data["message"] event_type = message["attributes"]["eventType"] secret_id = message["attributes"]["secretId"] message_data = Base64.decode64 message["data"] FunctionsFramework.logger.info "Received %s for %s. New metadata: %s." % [event_type, secret_id, message_data] end
Misconfigured topics
If Pub/Sub topics are added to a secret in a Create or Update operation but Secret Manager cannot publish messages to the topic due to a misconfiguration, the operation will fail with an error message indicating why the publish failed. This could happen, for example, if the topic does not exist, or if the Secret Manager service account does not have permission to publish.
If Pub/Sub topics are added to a secret and then afterwards the topic is changed so that Secret Manager can no longer publish messages (for instance, the topic is deleted, or the Secret Manager service account permissions are removed), Secret Manager will write logs to the Secret Manager Secret
resource with a message indicating why the publish failed.
What's next
- Learn how to analyze secrets with Cloud Asset Inventory.