open-vault/website/source/docs/auth/github.html.md

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	GitHub - Auth Methods	docs-auth-github	The GitHub auth method allows authentication with Vault using GitHub.

GitHub Auth Method

The github auth method can be used to authenticate with Vault using a GitHub personal access token. This method of authentication is most useful for humans: operators or developers using Vault directly via the CLI.

~> IMPORTANT NOTE: Vault does not support an OAuth workflow to generate GitHub tokens, so does not act as a GitHub application. As a result, this method uses personal access tokens. An important consequence is that any valid GitHub access token with the read:org scope can be used for authentication. If such a token is stolen from a third party service, and the attacker is able to make network calls to Vault, they will be able to log in as the user that generated the access token. When using this method it is a good idea to ensure that access to Vault is restricted at a network level rather than public. If these risks are unacceptable to you, you should use a different method.

Authentication

Via the CLI

The default path is /github. If this auth method was enabled at a different path, specify -path=/my-path in the CLI.

$ vault login -method=github token="MY_TOKEN"

Via the API

The default endpoint is auth/github/login. If this auth method was enabled at a different path, use that value instead of github.

$ curl \
    --request POST \
    --data '{"token": "MY_TOKEN"}' \
    http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/auth/github/login

The response will contain a token at auth.client_token:

{
  "auth": {
    "renewable": true,
    "lease_duration": 2764800,
    "metadata": {
      "username": "my-user",
      "org": "my-org"
    },
    "policies": [
      "default",
      "dev-policy"
    ],
    "accessor": "f93c4b2d-18b6-2b50-7a32-0fecf88237b8",
    "client_token": "1977fceb-3bfa-6c71-4d1f-b64af98ac018"
  }
}

Configuration

Auth methods must be configured in advance before users or machines can authenticate. These steps are usually completed by an operator or configuration management tool.

1. Enable the GitHub auth method:

   $ vault auth enable github
   

2. Use the /config endpoint to configure Vault to talk to GitHub.

   $ vault write auth/github/config organization=hashicorp
   

   For the complete list of configuration options, please see the API documentation.

3. Map the users/teams of that GitHub organization to policies in Vault. Team names must be "slugified":

   $ vault write auth/github/map/teams/dev value=dev-policy
   

   In this example, when members of the team "dev" in the organization "hashicorp" authenticate to Vault using a GitHub personal access token, they will be given a token with the "dev-policy" policy attached.

   ---

   You can also create mappings for a specific user map/users/<user> endpoint:

   $ vault write auth/github/map/users/sethvargo value=sethvargo-policy
   

   In this example, a user with the GitHub username sethvargo will be assigned the sethvargo-policy policy in addition to any team policies.

API

The GitHub auth method has a full HTTP API. Please see the GitHub Auth API for more details.