Secrets Manager

[chrisisbeef]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Storing secrets in your source code is a known major security issue.

Describe the solution you'd like
Arduino has solved this problem in their web editor through the creation of a Secrets tab in the editor where those secrets are associated to the user and the project; and when a project is opened by a difference user, that association can not be made so the values in their secrets tab are empty and have to be filled in by them. In the code, a simple token replacement appears to be how it is implemented in the arduino cloud editor; anyplace a secret needs to be added in the code, it is referenced using the template SECRET_YOUR_SECRET_NAME and that value will be replaced by the secret string.

For example:
If the Secrets tab contained the following secret

SECRET_SSID: Wokwi-Guest

Prior to compilation the template would go from this

const char SSID[] = SECRET_SSID;

to this

const char SSID[] = "Wokwi-Guest"

[urish]

Thanks! Opened this request for voting

[Cloufish]

May I ask for an explanation? o.O

I understand the idea - We want to not store secrets in plaintext inside the template
But @chrisisbeef described that:

Prior to compilation the template would go from this

const char SSID[] = SECRET_SSID;

to this

const char SSID[] = "Wokwi-Guest"

How is it more secure If we have a plaintext secret? ;o
Did you type it by mistake the other way around @chrisisbeef ?

[chrisisbeef]

How is it more secure If we have a plaintext secret? ;o Did you type it by mistake the other way around @chrisisbeef ?

The secret exists only as Plaintext at at compile-time and outside of the IDE - the biggest benefit here is that it allows developers to quickly prototype an idea without having their secrets stored as part of the source code itself. The SECRET_XXXXXX token would be replaced during preprocessing by the actual value of the stored secret from a vault built in to the environment (there are a couple different ways to actually implement this)

If you load up the Arduino IDE you can see an example of how they handle this problem

[urish]

Closing this issue as it has only received 1 vote despite being open for almost two years.