Sup3rS3cretMes5age

Sup3rS3cretMes5age is a lightweight, self‑destructing pastebin built around HashiCorp Vault as its storage engine. From a developer’s perspective, the application exposes a minimal HTTP API that accepts a payload, writes it to Vault with a TTL (time‑to‑live), and returns a short token that can be used to retrieve the secret once. The backend is essentially a thin wrapper around Vault’s key/value secrets engine, leveraging Vault’s native capabilities for encryption at rest, fine‑grained ACLs, and audit logging. The front‑end is a vanilla JavaScript SPA that interacts with the API over HTTPS, offering copy‑to‑clipboard and optional auto‑deletion on read.

Architecture

• Language & Runtime: Go 1.22 (or newer) powers the server, taking advantage of Go’s static binaries and efficient concurrency model. The codebase is intentionally minimal, with no external dependencies beyond the Vault client SDK and a few utility packages.
• Frameworks: The web layer is built with the standard net/http package and the lightweight chi router, providing clean routing without the overhead of a full MVC framework.
• Storage: All secrets live in Vault’s KV v2 engine. The application writes each message under a unique UUID path and sets the max_versions to 1, ensuring that once the TTL expires the data is automatically purged by Vault.
• Containerization: A Dockerfile builds a multi‑stage image that compiles the Go binary in a golang:alpine builder and then copies the binary into a lightweight scratch image. The resulting container is <10 MB, making it ideal for micro‑service deployments.
• Networking: The service exposes a single port (default 8082) and expects TLS termination upstream. It can be run behind an Nginx or Traefik reverse proxy, which handles Let’s Encrypt certificates via the ACME protocol.

Core Capabilities

• API Endpoints:
  • POST /api/v1/secret – accepts raw text or multipart file, returns a JSON payload containing the token.
  • GET /api/v1/secret/{token} – retrieves and immediately destroys the secret.
  • DELETE /api/v1/secret/{token} – optional manual revocation before TTL.
• CLI Integration: A bundled shell function (o()) demonstrates how to pipe content directly into the API, parse the JSON response with jq, and generate a sharable URL. The CLI guide also covers batch uploads, token expiration overrides, and audit logs.
• Webhook Support: Although not exposed out of the box, the application can emit HTTP callbacks on secret creation or deletion if wrapped in a small middleware layer. This is useful for integrating with CI/CD pipelines or notification systems.
• Extensibility: The Go code is organized around interfaces for the Vault client, making it straightforward to swap in a different secret store (e.g., Consul KV or AWS Secrets Manager) with minimal changes.

Deployment & Infrastructure

• Self‑Hosting: The recommended deployment is via Docker Compose or a Helm chart. Both configurations expose environment variables for VAULT_ADDR, VAULT_TOKEN, and optional TLS settings (HTTPS_ENABLED, TLS_CERT_PATH, TLS_KEY_PATH).
• Scalability: Because Vault handles secret storage, the application itself is stateless and horizontally scalable. Load balancers can distribute traffic across multiple replicas without session affinity. Vault’s own scaling strategies (replication, high‑availability) apply directly to the secret layer.
• Observability: The service emits Prometheus metrics (sup3r_secret_requests_total, sup3r_secret_errors_total) and logs in JSON format, enabling easy integration with ELK or Loki stacks. Vault audit logs provide end‑to‑end traceability of secret creation and access.

Integration & Extensibility

• Plugin System: While the core project does not ship a plugin framework, its Go architecture allows developers to fork and add middleware (e.g., rate limiting, JWT authentication) or expose additional endpoints.
• Webhooks & Callbacks: By exposing a configurable callback URL in the request body, developers can trigger downstream services upon secret creation or destruction.
• Custom Front‑End: The vanilla JS client can be replaced with a React or Vue wrapper. Since the API is RESTful and stateless, any front‑end can consume it with simple fetch calls.
• Authentication: The app currently relies on Vault’s token authentication, but developers can integrate external OAuth providers by adding a reverse proxy that sets the VAULT_TOKEN header based on an authenticated session.

Developer Experience

• Documentation: The README provides a clear walk‑through of local testing, production deployment, and CLI usage. Configuration options are enumerated with environment variable names and defaults.
• Community & Support: The project is hosted on GitHub with an active issue tracker. Pull requests are accepted, and contributors are encouraged to add language bindings or new storage backends.
• Licensing: MIT license allows unrestricted use, modification, and distribution, making it suitable for internal tooling or open‑source projects.

Use Cases

1. Internal Knowledge Sharing – Engineers can quickly share one‑time credentials or scripts within a secure environment, knowing that the data will self‑destroy after a configurable TTL.
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