actions / actions/actions-runner-controller

RUNNER_TOKEN should be injected as a secret

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#2,868 1 comment 12 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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community enhancement needs triage
Dominant language
Go
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

What would you like added?

Currently the RUNNER_TOKEN env var is injected into the runner pod as a plain text value from the Runner k8s resource (plain text too).
RUNNER_TOKEN should be kept safe and not injected as a plain text value.

Why is this needed?

Anyone with permission to describe a runner pod or anyone with access to a monitoring system like DataDog is actually able to obtain this registration token.
This token is valid for 1hour and would allow a malicious actor to register arbitrary runners.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the Runner Kubernetes resource and where RUNNER_TOKEN is injected into the runner pod, then inspect the controller's secret-handling path. Done means the registration token is no longer exposed as a plain-text resource or pod value while runner registration continues to work.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
github-actions, go, kubernetes
Domain
devops, infrastructure, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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