Secrets

Some plugins require authentication information such as a password or API key to be able to work, e.g. to login to an FTP server or an API key needed to update a DNS record. These secrets are historically saved in encrypted form in the .renewal.json files in the configuration folder.

There are also some global secrets, like the proxy server password and the SMTP server password, that are stored in settings.json.

Central Management

Version 2.1.17 introduced the secret manager to make it easier to re-use and manage secrets for renewals. Also it makes it possible to protect those aformentioned global secrets. The secret manager can be accessed from the main menu by going to More options... > Manage secrets. There you will be presented with a list of currently known secrets (if any) to update/delete them, and an option to add a new one. Each secret has a unique URI like vault://json/mysecret which you can use in various places like configuration files, command line arguments or script installation parameters.

Multiple backends

Currently there is only a single backend for the secret manager, which is a .json file in the configuration folder. The location of that file may be modified through settings.json, for example if you want to share it between different ACME endpoints. In the future the idea is to support more backends like Azure KeyVault. Implementation of a new backend is fairly straightforward for someone with C# experience, it just requires an assembly that implements ISecretService. Contributions in this area are most welcome!