auth

This GitHub Action authenticates to Google Cloud. It supports authentication via a Google Cloud Service Account Key JSON and authentication via Workload Identity Federation.

Workload Identity Federation is recommended over Service Account Keys as it obviates the need to export a long-lived credential and establishes a trust delegation relationship between a particular GitHub Actions workflow invocation and permissions on Google Cloud.

With Service Account Key JSON

1. Create a Google Cloud service account and grant IAM permissions
2. Export the long-lived JSON service account key
3. Upload the JSON service account key to a GitHub secret

With Workload Identity Federation

1. Create a Google Cloud service account and grant IAM permissions
2. Create and configure a Workload Identity Provider for GitHub
3. Exchange the GitHub Actions OIDC token for a short-lived Google Cloud access token

Prerequisites

• For authenticating via Google Cloud Service Account Keys, you must create and export a Google Cloud Service Account Key in JSON format.

• For authenticating via Workload Identity Federation, you must create and configure a Google Cloud Workload Identity Provider. See setup for instructions.

• You must run the actions/checkout@v3 step before this action. Omitting the checkout step or putting it after auth will cause future steps to be unable to authenticate.

• If you plan to create binaries, containers, pull requests, or other releases, add the following to your .gitignore to prevent accidentially committing credentials to your release artifact:

  # Ignore generated credentials from google-github-actions/auth
  gha-creds-*.json
  

• This action runs using Node 16. If you are using self-hosted GitHub Actions runners, you must use runner version 2.285.0 or newer.

Usage

jobs:
  job_id:
    # ...

    # Add "id-token" with the intended permissions.
    permissions:
      contents: 'read'
      id-token: 'write'

    steps:
    # actions/checkout MUST come before auth
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3'

    - id: 'auth'
      name: 'Authenticate to Google Cloud'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'
      with:
        workload_identity_provider: 'projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider'
        service_account: 'my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com'

    # ... further steps are automatically authenticated

Note that changing the permissions block may remove some default permissions. See the permissions documentation for more information.

See Examples for more examples. For help debugging common errors, see Troubleshooting

Inputs

Authenticating via Workload Identity Federation

The following inputs are for authenticating to Google Cloud via Workload Identity Federation.

⚠️ You must use the Cloud SDK version 390.0.0 or later to authenticate the bq and gsutil tools.

• workload_identity_provider: (Required) The full identifier of the Workload Identity Provider, including the project number, pool name, and provider name. If provided, this must be the full identifier which includes all parts:

  projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider
  

• service_account: (Required) Email address or unique identifier of the Google Cloud service account for which to generate credentials. For example:

  my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
  

• audience: (Optional) The value for the audience (aud) parameter in the generated GitHub Actions OIDC token. This value defaults to the value of workload_identity_provider, which is also the default value Google Cloud expects for the audience parameter on the token. We do not recommend changing this value.

Authenticating via Service Account Key JSON

The following inputs are for authenticating to Google Cloud via a Service Account Key JSON. We recommend using Workload Identity Federation instead as exporting a long-lived Service Account Key JSON credential poses a security risk.

• credentials_json: (Required) The Google Cloud JSON service account key to use for authentication. To generate access tokens or ID tokens using this service account, you must grant the underlying service account roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator permissions on itself.

  Note: we strongly advise that you "compress" your JSON into a single line string before storing it in a GitHub Secret. When a GitHub Secret is used in a GitHub Actions workflow, each line of the secret is masked in log output. This can lead to aggressive sanitization of benign characters like curly braces ({}) and brackets ([]). See Troubleshooting for more information.

Generating OAuth 2.0 access tokens

The following inputs are for generating OAuth 2.0 access tokens for authenticating to Google Cloud as an output for use in future steps in the workflow. These options only apply to access tokens generated by this action. By default, this action does not generate any tokens.

• token_format: This value must be "access_token" to generate OAuth 2.0 access tokens. To skip token generation, omit or set to the empty string "".

• access_token_lifetime: (Optional) Desired lifetime duration of the access token, in seconds. This must be specified as the number of seconds with a trailing "s" (e.g. 30s). The default value is 1 hour (3600s). The maximum value is 1 hour, unless the constraints/iam.allowServiceAccountCredentialLifetimeExtension organization policy is enabled, in which case the maximum value is 12 hours.

• access_token_scopes: (Optional) List of OAuth 2.0 access scopes to be included in the generated token. This is only valid when "token_format" is "access_token". The default value is:

  https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform
  

• access_token_subject: (Optional) Email address of a user to impersonate for Domain-Wide Delegation. Access tokens created for Domain-Wide Delegation cannot have a lifetime beyond 1 hour, even if the constraints/iam.allowServiceAccountCredentialLifetimeExtension organization policy is enabled.

  In order to support Domain-Wide Delegation via Workload Identity Federation, you must grant the external identity ("principalSet") roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator in addition to roles/iam.workloadIdentityUser. The default Workload Identity setup will only grant the latter role. If you want to use this GitHub Action with Domain-Wide Delegation, you must manually add the "Service Account Token Creator" role onto the external identity.

  You will also need to customize the access_token_scopes value to correspond to the OAuth scopes required for the API(s) you will access.

Generating ID tokens

The following inputs are for generating ID tokens for authenticating to Google Cloud as an output for use in future steps in the workflow. These options only apply to ID tokens generated by this action. By default, this action does not generate any tokens.

• token_format: This value must be "id_token" to generate ID tokens. To skip token generation, omit or set to the empty string "".

• id_token_audience: (Required) The audience for the generated ID Token.

• id_token_include_email: (Optional) Optional parameter of whether to include the service account email in the generated token. If true, the token will contain "email" and "email_verified" claims. This is only valid when "token_format" is "id_token". The default value is false.

Other inputs

The following inputs are for controlling the behavior of this GitHub Actions, regardless of the authentication mechanism.

• project_id: (Optional) Custom project ID to use for authentication and exporting into other steps. If unspecified, the project ID will be extracted from the Workload Identity Provider or the Service Account Key JSON.

• create_credentials_file: (Optional) If true, the action will securely generate a credentials file which can be used for authentication via gcloud and Google Cloud SDKs in other steps in the workflow. The default is true.

  The credentials file is exported into $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, which makes it available to all future steps and filesystems (including Docker-based GitHub Actions). The file is automatically removed at the end of the job via a post action. In order to use exported credentials, you must add the actions/checkout step before calling auth. This is due to how GitHub Actions creates $GITHUB_WORKSPACE:

  jobs:
   job_id:
     steps:
     - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3' # Must come first!
     - uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'

• export_environment_variables: (Optional) If true, the action will export common environment variables which are known to be consumed by popular downstream libraries and tools, including:

  • CLOUDSDK_PROJECT
  • CLOUDSDK_CORE_PROJECT
  • GCP_PROJECT
  • GCLOUD_PROJECT
  • GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT

  If "create_credentials_file" is true, additional environment variables are exported:

  • CLOUDSDK_AUTH_CREDENTIAL_FILE_OVERRIDE
  • GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
  • GOOGLE_GHA_CREDS_PATH

  If false, the action will not export any environment variables, meaning future steps are unlikely to be automatically authenticated to Google Cloud. The default value is true.

• delegates: (Optional) List of additional service account emails or unique identities to use for impersonation in the chain. By default there are no delegates.

• cleanup_credentials: (Optional) If true, the action will remove any created credentials from the filesystem upon completion. This only applies if "create_credentials_file" is true. The default is true.

Outputs

• project_id: Provided or extracted value for the Google Cloud project ID.

• credentials_file_path: Path on the local filesystem where the generated credentials file resides. This is only available if "create_credentials_file" was set to true.

• access_token: The Google Cloud access token for calling other Google Cloud APIs. This is only available when "token_format" is "access_token".

• access_token_expiration: The RFC3339 UTC "Zulu" format timestamp for the access token. This is only available when "token_format" is "access_token".

• id_token: The Google Cloud ID token. This is only available when "token_format" is "id_token".

Examples

Authenticating via Workload Identity Federation

This example demonstrates authenticating via Workload Identity Federation. For more information on how to setup and configure Workload Identity Federation, see #setup.

jobs:
  job_id:
    # ...

    # Add "id-token" with the intended permissions.
    permissions:
      contents: 'read'
      id-token: 'write'

    steps:
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3'

    - id: 'auth'
      name: 'Authenticate to Google Cloud'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'
      with:
        workload_identity_provider: 'projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider'
        service_account: 'my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com'

Authenticating via Service Account Key JSON

This example demonstrates authenticating via a Google Cloud Service Account Key JSON. We recommend using Workload Identity Federation instead as exporting a long-lived Service Account Key JSON credential poses a security risk.

This example assumes you have created a GitHub Secret named 'GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS' with the contents being an export Google Cloud Service Account Key JSON. See Creating and managing Google Cloud Service Account Keys for more information.

jobs:
  job_id:
    # ...

    steps:
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3'

    - id: 'auth'
      name: 'Authenticate to Google Cloud'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'
      with:
        credentials_json: '${{ secrets.GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS }}'

Authenticating to Container Registry and Artifact Registry

This example demonstrates authenticating to Google Container Registry (GCR) or Google Artifact Registry (GAR). The most common way to authenticate to these services is via a gcloud docker proxy. However, you can authenticate to these registries directly using the auth action:

• Username: oauth2accesstoken
• Password: ${{ steps.auth.outputs.access_token }}

You must set token_format: access_token in your Action YAML. Here are a few examples:

jobs:
  job_id:
    steps:
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3'

    - id: 'auth'
      name: 'Authenticate to Google Cloud'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'
      with:
        token_format: 'access_token'
        # Either user Workload Identity Federation or Service Account Keys. See
        # above more more examples

    # This example uses the docker login action
    - uses: 'docker/login-action@v1'
      with:
        registry: 'gcr.io' # or REGION-docker.pkg.dev
        username: 'oauth2accesstoken'
        password: '${{ steps.auth.outputs.access_token }}'

    # This example runs "docker login" directly to Artifact Registry.
    - run: |-
        echo '${{ steps.auth.outputs.access_token }}' | docker login -u oauth2accesstoken --password-stdin https://REGION-docker.pkg.dev

    # This example runs "docker login" directly to Container Registry.
    - run: |-
        echo '${{ steps.auth.outputs.access_token }}' | docker login -u oauth2accesstoken --password-stdin https://gcr.io

Configuring gcloud

This example demonstrates using this GitHub Action to configure authentication for the gcloud CLI tool.

Warning! Workload Identity Federation requires Cloud SDK (gcloud) version 363.0.0 or later.

jobs:
  job_id:
    # ...

    # Add "id-token" with the intended permissions.
    permissions:
      contents: 'read'
      id-token: 'write'

    steps:
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3'

    # Configure Workload Identity Federation via a credentials file.
    - id: 'auth'
      name: 'Authenticate to Google Cloud'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'
      with:
        workload_identity_provider: 'projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider'
        service_account: 'my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com'

    # Install gcloud, `setup-gcloud` automatically picks up authentication from `auth`.
    - name: 'Set up Cloud SDK'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/setup-gcloud@v1'

    # Now you can run gcloud commands authenticated as the impersonated service account.
    - id: 'gcloud'
      name: 'gcloud'
      run: |-
        gcloud secrets versions access "latest" --secret "my-secret"

Generating an OAuth 2.0 Access Token

This example demonstrates using this GitHub Action to generate an OAuth 2.0 Access Token for authenticating to Google Cloud. Most Google Cloud APIs accept this access token as authentication.

The default lifetime is 1 hour, but you can request up to 12 hours if you set the constraints/iam.allowServiceAccountCredentialLifetimeExtension organization policy.

Note: If you authenticate via credentials_json, the service account must have roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator on itself.

jobs:
  job_id:
    # ...

    # Add "id-token" with the intended permissions.
    permissions:
      contents: 'read'
      id-token: 'write'

    steps:
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3'

    # Configure Workload Identity Federation and generate an access token.
    - id: 'auth'
      name: 'Authenticate to Google Cloud'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'
      with:
        token_format: 'access_token' # <--
        workload_identity_provider: 'projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider'
        service_account: 'my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com'
        access_token_lifetime: '300s' # optional, default: '3600s' (1 hour)

    # Example of using the output. The token is usually provided as a Bearer
    # token.
    - id: 'access-secret'
      run: |-
        curl https://secretmanager.googleapis.com/v1/projects/my-project/secrets/my-secret/versions/1:access \
          --header "Authorization: Bearer ${{ steps.auth.outputs.access_token }}"

Generating an ID Token (JWT)

This example demonstrates using this GitHub Action to generate a Google Cloud ID Token for authenticating to Google Cloud. This is most commonly used when invoking a Cloud Run service.

Note: If you authenticate via credentials_json, the service account must have roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator on itself.

jobs:
  job_id:
    # ...

    # Add "id-token" with the intended permissions.
    permissions:
      contents: 'read'
      id-token: 'write'

    steps:
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v3'

    # Configure Workload Identity Federation and generate an access token.
    - id: 'auth'
      name: 'Authenticate to Google Cloud'
      uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'
      with:
        token_format: 'id_token' # <--
        workload_identity_provider: 'projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider'
        service_account: 'my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com'
        id_token_audience: 'https://myapp-uvehjacqzq.a.run.app' # required, value depends on target
        id_token_include_email: true # optional

    # Example of using the output. The token is usually provided as a Bearer
    # token.
    - id: 'invoke-service'
      run: |-
        curl https://myapp-uvehjacqzq.a.run.app \
          --header "Authorization: Bearer ${{ steps.auth.outputs.id_token }}"

Setting up Workload Identity Federation

To exchange a GitHub Actions OIDC token for a Google Cloud access token, you must create and configure a Workload Identity Provider. These instructions use the gcloud command-line tool.

Alternatively, you can also use the gh-oidc Terraform module to automate your infrastructure provisioning. See examples for usage.

1. Create or use an existing Google Cloud project. You must have privileges to create Workload Identity Pools, Workload Identity Providers, and to manage Service Accounts and IAM permissions. Save your project ID as an environment variable. The rest of these steps assume this environment variable is set:

   export PROJECT_ID="my-project" # update with your value

2. (Optional) Create a Google Cloud Service Account. If you already have a Service Account, take note of the email address and skip this step.

   gcloud iam service-accounts create "my-service-account" \
     --project "${PROJECT_ID}"

3. (Optional) Grant the Google Cloud Service Account permissions to access Google Cloud resources. This step varies by use case. For demonstration purposes, you could grant access to a Google Secret Manager secret or Google Cloud Storage object.

4. Enable the IAM Credentials API:

   gcloud services enable iamcredentials.googleapis.com \
     --project "${PROJECT_ID}"

5. Create a Workload Identity Pool:

   gcloud iam workload-identity-pools create "my-pool" \
     --project="${PROJECT_ID}" \
     --location="global" \
     --display-name="Demo pool"

6. Get the full ID of the Workload Identity Pool:

   gcloud iam workload-identity-pools describe "my-pool" \
     --project="${PROJECT_ID}" \
     --location="global" \
     --format="value(name)"

   Save this value as an environment variable:

   export WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_POOL_ID="..." # value from above
   
   # This should look like:
   #
   #   projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool
   #

7. Create a Workload Identity Provider in that pool:

   gcloud iam workload-identity-pools providers create-oidc "my-provider" \
     --project="${PROJECT_ID}" \
     --location="global" \
     --workload-identity-pool="my-pool" \
     --display-name="Demo provider" \
     --attribute-mapping="google.subject=assertion.sub,attribute.actor=assertion.actor,attribute.repository=assertion.repository" \
     --issuer-uri="https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com"

   The attribute mappings map claims in the GitHub Actions JWT to assertions you can make about the request (like the repository or GitHub username of the principal invoking the GitHub Action). These can be used to further restrict the authentication using --attribute-condition flags.

   The example above only maps the actor and repository values. To map additional values, add them to the attribute map:

   --attribute-mapping="google.subject=assertion.sub,attribute.repository_owner=assertion.repository_owner"

   You must map any claims in the incoming token to attributes before you can assert on those attributes in a CEL expression or IAM policy!

8. Allow authentications from the Workload Identity Provider originating from your repository to impersonate the Service Account created above:

   # TODO(developer): Update this value to your GitHub repository.
   export REPO="username/name" # e.g. "google/chrome"
   
   gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding "my-service-account@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
     --project="${PROJECT_ID}" \
     --role="roles/iam.workloadIdentityUser" \
     --member="principalSet://iam.googleapis.com/${WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_POOL_ID}/attribute.repository/${REPO}"

   Note that $WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_POOL_ID should be the full Workload Identity Pool resource ID, like:

   projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool
   

9. Extract the Workload Identity Provider resource name:

   gcloud iam workload-identity-pools providers describe "my-provider" \
     --project="${PROJECT_ID}" \
     --location="global" \
     --workload-identity-pool="my-pool" \
     --format="value(name)"

   Use this value as the workload_identity_provider value in your GitHub Actions YAML.

10. Use this GitHub Action with the Workload Identity Provider ID and Service Account email. The GitHub Action will mint a GitHub OIDC token and exchange the GitHub token for a Google Cloud access token (assuming the authorization is correct). This all happens without exporting a Google Cloud service account key JSON!

    Note: It can take up to 5 minutes from when you configure the Workload Identity Pool mapping until the permissions are available.

Organizational Policy Constraints

By default, Google Cloud allows you to create Workload Identity Pools and Workload Identity Providers for any endpoints. Your organization may restrict which external identity providers are permitted on your Google Cloud account. To enable GitHub Actions as a Workload Identity Pool and Provider, add the https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com to the allowed iam.workloadIdentityPoolProviders Org Policy constraint.

gcloud resource-manager org-policies allow "constraints/iam.workloadIdentityPoolProviders" \
  https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com

You can specify a --folder or --organization. If you do not have permission to manage these Org Policies, please contact your Google Cloud administrator.

For GitHub Enterprise Server, the endpoint will be your server URL:

gcloud resource-manager org-policies allow "constraints/iam.workloadIdentityPoolProviders" \
  https://my.github.company

GitHub Token Format

Below is a sample GitHub Token for reference for attribute mappings. For a list of all mappings, see the GitHub OIDC token documentation.

{
  "jti": "...",
  "sub": "repo:username/reponame:ref:refs/heads/main",
  "aud": "https://iam.googleapis.com/projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider",
  "ref": "refs/heads/main",
  "sha": "d11880f4f451ee35192135525dc974c56a3c1b28",
  "repository": "username/reponame",
  "repository_owner": "username",
  "repository_visibility": "private",
  "repository_id": "74",
  "repository_owner_id": "65",
  "run_id": "1238222155",
  "run_number": "18",
  "run_attempt": "1",
  "actor": "username",
  "actor_id": "12",
  "workflow": "oidc",
  "head_ref": "",
  "base_ref": "",
  "event_name": "push",
  "ref_type": "branch",
  "job_workflow_ref": "username/reponame/.github/workflows/token.yml@refs/heads/main",
  "iss": "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com",
  "nbf": 1631718827,
  "exp": 1631719727,
  "iat": 1631719427
}

Versioning

We recommend pinning to the latest available major version:

- uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1'

While this action attempts to follow semantic versioning, but we're ultimately human and sometimes make mistakes. To prevent accidental breaking changes, you can also pin to a specific version:

- uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v1.0.0'

However, you will not get automatic security updates or new features without explicitly updating your version number. Note that we only publish MAJOR and MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versions. There is not a floating alias for MAJOR.MINOR.