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Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

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Re: Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

#51

Post by danenania »

tompic823 wrote: post #47
danenania wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founder of EnvKey here. I'm glad to hear you're a happy user :) There's certainly room for alternatives in this space! I'd say the major difference from my perspective is that EnvKey uses client-side end-to-end encryption and a signed desktop application instead of a web app interface, giving it quite a different security and trust model than Doppler. Because Doppler is delivered as a web app, its users are implicitl…

Hey Dane- totally fair points. Agreed that Doppler and EnvKey have different threat models. Regarding your point about malicious JavaScript- I'd encourage you to take a look at our Content Security Policy. We've gone to great lengths to explicitly disallow all unsafe-inline JavaScript (technically in report mode, but will be moved to block mode within the next few days). This is just one of many things we do to help…

Hey there! I completely agree with you on the tradeoffs between UX and security when it comes to end-to-end encryption. It's a tricky balance to get right, and I think it's great that there are multiple approaches out there in the market. People should weigh their own unique needs and comfort level when making the choice.

That said, a Content Security Policy doesn't actually address the issue I'm raising, because an attacker with server access could simply remove or modify it.

Re: Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

#53

Post by kbyatnal »

This is very neat - my favorite part so far is being able to synchronize local .env across all developers instantly. We currently use 1Password as a hacky solution for this, which is a bit of a pain.

I saw the demo video which looks great - one question though, how does this work with Heroku add-ons? If you configure Heroku Postgres for example, a DATABASE_URL env var gets automatically added. This variable can change (e.g. when Heroku applies a patch to your DB and restarts it). Is the sync two way, or do you expect applications to have two sets of environment variables (split across Doppler and Heroku)?

Re: Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

#54

Post by bvallelunga »

qchris wrote: post #46
tompic823 wrote: post #2

Tom here from Doppler. I'm a founding engineer at Doppler and work on most of our security. Feel free to hit me with any security questions about our product, philosophy, etc.

Hi, congrats on the launch! Potentially a little off topic, but I'm curious how you came up with the name Doppler. After the audio effect, or the Witcher creature, or something else entirely?

The domain was available ;) More seriously, outside of the properties (easy to spell and most people have heard of it before) I wanted something that was more than just environment management. Something grand we could grow into.

Re: Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

#56

Post by lukevp »

onei wrote: post #44
tompic823 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! We address this in detail on our Security page [0], but I'm happy to give a high-level overview here: 1. Don't go down! We run two independent compute clusters on different managed infrastructure products (GKE and GAE) and route between them at the DNS layer to help avoid downtime 2. We store local encrypted fallback files on your infra via our CLI [1]. These local fallback files are fully managed and…

Is there a scenario where the CLI fallback gets out of sync and you may as well not have the fallback? How is the fallback file secured and what's stopping someone else from accessing those secrets of they can get at the encrypted file itself? Finally, what if a disgruntled ex-employee still has that fallback - can access be revoked reliably even if your API is down or they just turn off the internet connection?

I think if you substitute all your questions with env vars, all the same issues present themselves. You have to roll secrets whenever someone with access no longer has access, and the env vars can be stale just the same as the encrypted file.

Re: Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

#57

Post by tompic823 »

danenania wrote: post #51
tompic823 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Dane- totally fair points. Agreed that Doppler and EnvKey have different threat models. Regarding your point about malicious JavaScript- I'd encourage you to take a look at our Content Security Policy. We've gone to great lengths to explicitly disallow all unsafe-inline JavaScript (technically in report mode, but will be moved to block mode within the next few days). This is just one of many things we do to help…

Hey there! I completely agree with you on the tradeoffs between UX and security when it comes to end-to-end encryption. It's a tricky balance to get right, and I think it's great that there are multiple approaches out there in the market. People should weigh their own unique needs and comfort level when making the choice. That said, a Content Security Policy doesn't actually address the issue I'm raising, because an…

Server access is an interesting scenario to explore. If we're considering an attacker gaining server access, what's to stop that attacker from shipping a modified EnvKey binary that steals your customers' secrets and their encryption keys? If the security of your binary is predicated on GitHub repo access, what happens in the event of GitHub account takeover? At some point, no system is infallible, and I think our Threat Mode adequately addresses this. I appreciate your point of view on this though.

Re: Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

#59

Post by rgmvisser »

kbyatnal wrote: post #53

This is very neat - my favorite part so far is being able to synchronize local .env across all developers instantly. We currently use 1Password as a hacky solution for this, which is a bit of a pain. I saw the demo video which looks great - one question though, how does this work with Heroku add-ons? If you configure Heroku Postgres for example, a DATABASE_URL env var gets automatically added. This variable can chang…

I am glad you asked! I built the Heroku integration at Doppler. We are doing a one way syncing as we believe Doppler should be the single source of truth for your secrets. However, we know that addons & attachments are an important part of Heroku, so we make sure we never overwrite any of the addons/attachments env vars. Those continue to live within Heroku as they wouldn't make much sense or be useful outside of that context.

Re: Launch HN: Doppler (YC W19) – Easily manage your env vars and secrets

#60

Post by rgmvisser »

llarsson wrote: post #58

I could not find anything about Terraform integration. That is something I bet many of your customers will need.

We do support Terraform via our CLI, but the integration is still a bit more primitive than some of our other integrations that are more "one click". It is definitely on our radar and we are actively exploring a tighter integration with Terraform.
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