Secrets Don’t Belong in Config

7 points by alurm

ryan-duve

What is "a narrowly scoped" environment variable in this context?

roryokane
I’m not sure, but it might mean an environment variable only set for the process that needs it, rather than globally. Like this in Bash:
```
# narrowly scoped: myapp only
PASSWORD=hunter2 ./myapp

# widely scoped: the whole Bash process
export PASSWORD=hunter2
./myapp

# more widely scoped: the current Bash process and all future ones
echo 'export PASSWORD=hunter2' >> ~/.bashrc
exec bash # reload shell
./myapp
```
With that definition, narrowly scoped env var usage would be a property of the secrets management process, not a property of the secret-using program.