CHT Android repository needs to find way around 100 secret/repo limitation

[mrjones-plip]

Describe the issue
MoH Togo can not publish their APK because this cht-android repo has hit the 100 secret/repo limit. They're looking for an immediate term work around for this:

• Cannot add Togo flavour - "Failed to add secret, you've reached the 100 secret limit" #344

Describe the improvement you'd like
A long term solution so that future deployments have an easy way to publish their APKs. This might include:

• Using AWS Secrets in GH Actions
• Using a single encrypted file with 100s of secrets in it. Something GPG might work. We'd need to be sure we weren't logging secrets though, so proper handling/masking should be used in this case to avoid it being logged in cleartext.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Have each new deployment beg other APKs to rescind their secret's from this repository, as Togo is doing now

[kennsippell]

There are 24 secrets for _ALIAS_ and _KEYSTORE_PATH_ information which I believe are totally unused and might provide months/years of needed secrets.

[mrjones-plip]

@craig-landry or @garethbowen - I can't see the secrets (not the values obviously, but the number of them and their names). I think you're both busy right now (this week?), but when you're "back in the office", can you look into a basic audit of the secrets we have in the repo?

Maybe getting rid of the 24 Kenn mentioned is enough to wrap this ticket up?

[garethbowen]

Another option is to use the 1pass API to store them there. We could have a vault dedicated to this.

can you look into a basic audit of the secrets we have in the repo?

I did a quick search on the code and I think those are referenced, eg:

cht-android/Makefile

Lines 173 to 174 in 5e64289

	$(eval VARNAME=ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PATH_${ORG_UPPER})
	$(eval ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PATH := $(shell echo ${${VARNAME}}))

However why this would ever be set to anything other than the default I don't know.

@kennsippell Any ideas? I'm guessing these secrets all have the same value so it'd be safe to delete?

[kennsippell]

Yes. Those two are used but the app specific ones I believe are unused and safe to delete. I think the keygen script outputs 6 secret values but only 4 of them are used.

[garethbowen]

Those two are used but the app specific ones I believe are unused and safe to delete.

The lines I quoted are the app specific ones, specifically ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PATH_${ORG_UPPER} so they are referenced in code. Do you think that block isn't running, ie, ifndef ANDROID_SECRETS_IV is false?

[garethbowen]

@mrjones-plip I think the way forward is...

1. Modify the code above to use hardcoded paths for these two variables with the potential to overwrite with secrets to maintain backwards compatibility (just in case someone is changing it, potentially in a fork). I think hardcoded paths are better than secrets here because there's nothing that's secret about these values and it reduces complexity to have the values visible in the repo rather than obscured in config.
2. If Kenn is right and the "keygen script outputs 6 secret values" then modify it to only output 4.
3. Unfortunately if my understanding of the code is correct we still can't delete the unnecessary secrets because partner apps are on older versions of cht-android which depend on them, so for backwards compatibility, we'll leave the secrets there and clean them out when necessary, or at a certain time in the future to allow app services to migrate.

Can you prioritise this with Allies other work?

[mrjones-plip]

@garethbowen - yeah - sounds good!

Can you give me access to view secrets in CHT Android repo? While I know I can't retrieve the values here, I'll need to know which ones we've defined.

Do we know of the next CHT Android app that we'll need to create in terms of how pressing this is? (it's pressing I know, but HOW pressing ; )

[kennsippell]

The lines I quoted are the app specific ones

My mistake

[garethbowen]

@mrjones-plip I've made you a full admin on this repo.

[mrjones-plip]

Thanks for the perms @garethbowen! Confirmed I can now audit secrets.

There are currently 97 secrets and currently we need 4 per new app as I understand it:

• ANDROID_KEYSTORE_app-name
• ANDROID_KEY_PASSWORD_app-name
• ANDROID_SECRETS_KEY_app-name
• ANDROID_SECRETS_IV_app-name

Can you prioritise this with Allies other work?

@garethbowen - This seems like we need to drop everything and fix this ASAP, if only to find a stop gap solution for the next APK or two, if not a holistic long term solution. That sound about right?

[garethbowen]

@mrjones-plip It's one of those things that's not going to matter at all, until it matters a great deal. But the fix should be easy enough, right? The basic version is just replacing the lines in the makefile with hardcoded strings.

I don't think we need to "drop everything" unless you know of some project that's blocked on this (or soon will be). But getting it done this quarter would be good.

[mrjones-plip]

Awesome - thanks for the confirmation @garethbowen !