Chinmina Bridge: Buildkite/Github OIDC token bridge

Allows Buildkite agents to get valid GitHub tokens that can be used to perform Git or other GitHub API actions. It is intended to be an alternative to the use of SSH deploy keys or long-lived Personal Access Tokens.

The bridge itself is an HTTP endpoint that uses a GitHub application to create ephemeral GitHub access tokens. Requests are authorized with a Buildkite OIDC token, allowing a token to be created just for the repository associated with an executing pipeline.

The token is created with contents:read permissions, and only has access to the repository associated with the executing pipeline.

Two endpoints are exposed: /token, which returns a token and its expiry, and /git-credentials, which returns the token and repository metadata in the Git Credentials format.

Overview

chinmina-bridge is used by jobs running on a Buildkite agent to request tokens from Github. These can be used to communicate with the GitHub API or (via Git) to enable authenticated Git actions.

Git authentication is facilitated by a Git credential helper, which communicates with the bridge and supplies the result to Git in the appropriate format.

The following sequence illustrates a Git authentication flow facilitated by chinmina-bridge.

sequenceDiagram
    box Buildkite Agent
        participant Buildkite Job
        participant Git
        participant Credential Helper
    end
    box Self hosted
        participant Chinmina Bridge
    end
    Buildkite Job->>+Git: clone
    Git ->>+ Credential Helper: get credentials
    Credential Helper->>+Buildkite API: Request Buildkite OIDC token
    Buildkite API->>-Credential Helper: bk-oidc
    Credential Helper->>+Chinmina Bridge: Request GH token (auth bk-oidc)
    Chinmina Bridge->>+Buildkite API: Get Pipeline Details
    Buildkite API-->>-Chinmina Bridge: pipeline-repository
    Chinmina Bridge->>+GitHub: Create Token (auth app JWT)
    GitHub-->>-Chinmina Bridge: app-token
    Chinmina Bridge->>-Credential Helper: bk-oidc
    Credential Helper->>-Git: "x-access-token"/app-token
    Git-->>-Buildkite Job: complete

Why?

There are two options generally used to authenticate Buildkite agents to GitHub:

1. Via a PAT (owned by a GitHub user) that is saved in the agent S3 secrets bucket
2. Via a deploy key (registered to a single repository) that is likewise saved to S3.

As the organization scales however, the overhead of managing them becomes unwieldy, and it can be quite difficult for an organisation to successfully manage a rotation scheme.

Unless centralized issuance is practiced as well, both of these schemes can produce tokens that are tied to a user, leading to unexpected problems when a user leaves the organization. There is also the potential for key material to be stored or shared incorrectly, leading to increased possibility of accidental leakage.

Lastly, all key material is typically stored in an S3 bucket. This is straightforward to configure and maintain, but creates a significant issue in the event of an account/bucket breach.

Using a GitHub application to authenticate GitHub actions allows:

1. Access keys for repositories are generated on demand and expire after one hour.
2. The generated tokens are only kept by a build agent for the duration of the step, and do not require any other persistence.
3. The private key for the GitHub application is specific to the chinmina-bridge service. It can (and should) be rotated, an operation that is easy to perform.
4. Supplied tokens are scoped to just the repositories and actions necessary for the requesting pipeline.
5. Additional Buildkite configuration per repository is not required. If the application has access, the agent can request a token for it. No need to create PATs or generate keypairs, and no need to upload them in multiple places. This allows the an organization to have tighter access control on pipeline setup without creating additional support overhead.
6. Tokens can enable a wider set of actions than simple Git operations (e.g. PR comments). This is not yet implemented in chinmina-bridge, but is a high priority for future enhancement.

Also, since chinmina-bridge uses Buildkite's OIDC tokens to authorize requests, the claims associated with the token can be used to further refine access to a token.

Github has some good documentation about the pros and cons of the application token approach. There are two primary downsides documented:

• Additional setup is needed to create the GitHub App.
• Installation access tokens expire after 1 hour, and so need to be re-generated, typically on-demand using code.

chinmina-bridge solves the second problem, by making token generation for a pipeline at build time trivial.

What's right for your organization?

To understand what's right for your organization, consider:

• how many pipelines do you have? (That is, how many keys are managed?)
• how easily are tokens rotated?
• (related) if the secrets bucket is somehow compromised, how difficult would it be for the organization to respond?
• if tokens are issued to a user, does a person leaving cause an outage in a build pipeline?
• what processes/restrictions does your organization have around repository access in GitHub and pipeline creation in Buildkite?

Limitations

• can only grant contents:read access
• will only grant access to the repository associated with a pipeline
• if the buildkite user has permissions to modify the pipeline repository, they may configure a repository that they don't have access to in GitHub (but is accessible in the app). This would allow them to potentially extract code via use of the pipeline step configuration. BUT:
  • it's OK if your organization members have read access to the same set of repositories covered by the chinmina-bridge GitHub application.
    OR
  • it's OK if your organization controls the creation/configuration of pipelines: this restricts the opportunity to misconfigure a pipeline.

Operations

See the observability documentation for more details on the information provided by the system when running.

Configuration

Requirements:

1. A Buildkite organization, and a user with sufficient access to create an API token that can be used to get the details of any pipeline that is expected to be built.
2. A Github organization, and a user with sufficient permissions to create a Github App and install it into the organization.
3. Ability to deploy a server that can be accessed by the build agents (for example, an ECS service)
4. Ability to allow Buildkite agents to download and use a custom plugin or ability to add a plugin to the default settings of the Buildkite agents.

Buildkite setup

Create an API key with access to the REST API only with access to the read_pipelines scope.

Save the key securely: it will be provided to the server in a later step. Use a "bot" user to create the token if you can.

Github setup

1. Create an application in your Github organization
   • The application must request contents:read
   • Note the application ID
   • Create and save a private key for the application
2. Install the application into the Github organization
   • choose the repositories the application will have access to. This is the limit of the resources that the application can vend tokens for.

Configure and deploy the bridge server

The server is a Go application expecting to read configuration from environment variables, and can be deployed to a server or as a container.

Variables

Server

• SERVER_PORT (optional, default 8080): the TCP port the server will listen on.
• SERVER_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT_SECS (optional, default 25): the number of seconds the server will wait when asked to terminate with SIGINT

Authorization

• JWT_BUILDKITE_ORGANIZATION_SLUG (required): the slug of your Buildkite organization. This is the identifier of your organization that appears in your Buildkite URLs.
• JWT_AUDIENCE (optional, default=app-token-issuer): The expected value of the aud claim in the JWT. Describes the intended audience of the issued JWT token, guards against token reuse. Using a non-default value will require configuration of the credentials helper plugin.
• JWT_ISSUER_URL (optional, default https://agent.buildkite.com): the expected value of the iss claim in the agent JWT. Also used to discover the JWKS configuration from the .well-known address.
• JWT_JWKS_STATIC (optional): a local JWKS JSON file that can be used instead of Buildkite. Used to verify the JWT sent by the Buildkite agents to the server. This should only be required for server testing, as agents will only create a token using the Buildkite key.

Buildkite API

• BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN (required): The API token created for pipeline metadata lookups. Store securely and provide to the container securely.

GitHub API connectivity

• GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY (required): The PEM formatted private key of the created Github app. Store securely and provide to the container securely. This is a highly sensitive credential.
• GITHUB_APP_ID (required): The application ID of the Github application created above.
• GITHUB_APP_INSTALLATION_ID (required): The installation ID of the created Github application into your organization.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

• direnv is the tool for setting up the test environment
• some variant of docker compose makes it easier to run locally
• Run make keygen to create test keys
• Execute git commands in the .development/keys directory. This has git configuration set up so it uses a local credential helper that will use the keys in the .development/keys directory.

License