Almost every program that we run has access to the environment, so nothing stops them from curling our credentials to some nefarious server.
Why don’t we put credentials in files and then pass them to the programs that need them? Maybe coupled with some mechanism that prevents executables from reading any random file except those approved.
CyberArk is a commercial product that attacks this problem space. It puts an agent process on the host next to your app. Only processes whose fingerprint matches those authorized to access a credential are allowed to fetch it. That fingerprint can be based on the host (known list of production hosts), the os user ID that owns the pid, the path to the executable for the pid, and probably a few more items.
Under that model your app just needs to know the environment that it wants (inject however you want) and the userid it wants to use. At runtime it reaches out to the local cyberark agent to obtain the password secret.
Under this model, a proprietary, closed source process can access all your secrets.
great point…is there an open source equivalent?
no, because there are superior approaches already, some of them you can find in this post
boooo
eh… good luck