You should consider setting up Workload Identity Federation and authentication to Google Cloud using your GitHub runner OIDC token. Google Cloud will "trust" the token and allow you to impersonate service accounts. No static keys!
Yes it does. We deploy firebase and bunch of other GCP things from github actions and there are zero API keys or JSON credentials anywhere.
Everything is service accounts and workload identity federation, with restrictions such as only letting main branch in specific repo to use it (so no problem with unreviewed PRs getting production access).
Edit: if you have a specific error or issue where this doesn't work for you, and can share the code, I can have a look.
No thank you, there is zero benefit to migrating and no risk in using credentials the way I do.
How do you sign a firebase custom auth token with workload identity federation? How about a pre signed storage URL? Off the top of my head I think those were two things that don't work
First, regarding "zero benefit" and "no risk". I disagree. The risk and benefit might be low, and not worth the change for you. But it is absolutely not zero.
You have a JSON key file which you can't know how many people have. The person who created the key, downloaded it and then stored it as github secret - did they download it to /dev/shm? Did some npm/brew install script steal it from their downloads folder? Any of the github repo owners can get hold of it. Depending on whether you use github environments/deployments and have set it up properly, so can anyone with write access to the repo. Do you pin all your dependencies, reusable workflows etc, or can a compromise of someone elses repo steal your secrets?
With the workload identity auth, there is no key. Each access obtains a short lived token. Only workflows on main branch can get it. Every run will have audit logs, and so will every action taken by that token. Risk of compromise is much lower, but even more importantly, if compromised I'll be able to know exactly when and how, and what malicious actions were taken.
Maybe this is paranoid to you and not worth it. That's fine. But it's not "no risk", and it is worth to me to protect personal data of our users.
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As for your question, first step is just to run https://github.com/google-github-actions/auth with identity provider configured in your GCP project, restricted to your github repo or org.
This will create application default credentials that most GCP tools and libraries will just work with as if when you are running things locally after "gcloud auth login".
