google-yubikey 0.2.6

Generate Google Service Account tokens with your YubiKey

google-yubikey

Generate Google Service Account tokens with your YubiKey!

Motivation

This is perhaps the most secure way to use Google credentials outside of Google Cloud, since the private key never leaves the device, and so it cannot be leaked or stolen without physically stealing the YubiKey.

Additionally, each operation is protected with a YubiKey PIN, providing a 2nd factor of authentication as something a user knows (in addition to something a user has, which is the YubiKey itself).

In this way, a single YubiKey can represent the identity of a user across many Service Accounts, without the need to send the private key material over the wire at any point.

This makes it even more secure than Service Account impersonation, where a user's long-term refresh token has been traditionally stored on their machine, and could thus be compromised.

Requirements

YubiKey 4+

Setup

pip3 install google-yubikey

Usage

1. Set up YubiKey PIN, as explained here.

2. Run this only once to set up a private key on the YubiKey, or to renew it after expiration:

   google-yubikey generate-key
   

3. Install and authenticate with Google Cloud SDK:

   gcloud auth application-default login
   

   This is needed only for initially setting up YubiKey with a Service Account. Your user account must have at least Service Account Key Admin role or iam.serviceAccountKeys.create permission on the target Service Account(s).

4. Run this once to associate your YubiKey with each Service Account:

   google-yubikey upload-key -a <service_account_email>
   

5. As a good practice, revoke your Google Cloud SDK credentials, which limits the potential for their exposure only to the time of the public key upload:

   gcloud auth application-default revoke
   

6. Run this every time you'd like to generate a Service Account token:

   google-yubikey token -a <service_account_email>
   

7. Further customization options are available through:

   google-yubikey [<command>] -h
   

Disclaimer

This tool is still early on in the development. It works, but may have unusual edge cases that make it fail for your setup. Please use with caution, and raise an issue if you come across one.