AWS::SecretsManager::Secret

Creates a new secret. A secret can be a password, a set of credentials such as a user name and password, an OAuth token, or other secret information that you store in an encrypted form in Secrets Manager.

For Amazon RDS master user credentials, see AWS::RDS::DBCluster MasterUserSecret.

For Amazon Redshift admin user credentials, see AWS::Redshift::Cluster.

To retrieve a secret in a CloudFormation template, use a dynamic reference. For more information, see Retrieve a secret in an AWS CloudFormation resource.

For information about creating a secret in the console, see Create a secret. For information about creating a secret using the CLI or SDK, see CreateSecret.

For information about retrieving a secret in code, see Retrieve secrets from Secrets Manager.

Syntax

To declare this entity in your AWS CloudFormation template, use the following syntax:

JSON

{
  "Type" : "AWS::SecretsManager::Secret",
  "Properties" : {
      "Description" : String,
      "GenerateSecretString" : GenerateSecretString,
      "KmsKeyId" : String,
      "Name" : String,
      "ReplicaRegions" : [ ReplicaRegion, ... ],
      "SecretString" : String,
      "Tags" : [ Tag, ... ]
    }
}

YAML

Type: AWS::SecretsManager::Secret
Properties:
  Description: String
  GenerateSecretString: 
    GenerateSecretString
  KmsKeyId: String
  Name: String
  ReplicaRegions: 
    - ReplicaRegion
  SecretString: 
    String
  Tags: 
    - Tag

Properties

Description

The description of the secret.

Required: No

Type: String

Update requires: No interruption

GenerateSecretString

A structure that specifies how to generate a password to encrypt and store in the secret. To include a specific string in the secret, use SecretString instead. If you omit both GenerateSecretString and SecretString, you create an empty secret. When you make a change to this property, a new secret version is created.

We recommend that you specify the maximum length and include every character type that the system you are generating a password for can support.

Required: No

Type: GenerateSecretString

Update requires: No interruption

KmsKeyId

The ARN, key ID, or alias of the AWS KMS key that Secrets Manager uses to encrypt the secret value in the secret. An alias is always prefixed by alias/, for example alias/aws/secretsmanager. For more information, see About aliases.

To use a AWS KMS key in a different account, use the key ARN or the alias ARN.

If you don't specify this value, then Secrets Manager uses the key aws/secretsmanager. If that key doesn't yet exist, then Secrets Manager creates it for you automatically the first time it encrypts the secret value.

If the secret is in a different AWS account from the credentials calling the API, then you can't use aws/secretsmanager to encrypt the secret, and you must create and use a customer managed AWS KMS key.

Required: No

Type: String

Update requires: No interruption

Name

The name of the new secret.

The secret name can contain ASCII letters, numbers, and the following characters: /_+=.@-

Do not end your secret name with a hyphen followed by six characters. If you do so, you risk confusion and unexpected results when searching for a secret by partial ARN. Secrets Manager automatically adds a hyphen and six random characters after the secret name at the end of the ARN.

Required: No

Type: String

Update requires: Replacement

ReplicaRegions

A custom type that specifies a Region and the KmsKeyId for a replica secret.

Required: No

Type: Array of ReplicaRegion

Update requires: No interruption

SecretString

The text to encrypt and store in the secret. We recommend you use a JSON structure of key/value pairs for your secret value. To generate a random password, use GenerateSecretString instead. If you omit both GenerateSecretString and SecretString, you create an empty secret. When you make a change to this property, a new secret version is created.

Required: No

Type: String

Update requires: No interruption

Tags

A list of tags to attach to the secret. Each tag is a key and value pair of strings in a JSON text string, for example:

[{"Key":"CostCenter","Value":"12345"},{"Key":"environment","Value":"production"}]

Secrets Manager tag key names are case sensitive. A tag with the key "ABC" is a different tag from one with key "abc".

Stack-level tags, tags you apply to the CloudFormation stack, are also attached to the secret.

If you check tags in permissions policies as part of your security strategy, then adding or removing a tag can change permissions. If the completion of this operation would result in you losing your permissions for this secret, then Secrets Manager blocks the operation and returns an Access Denied error. For more information, see Control access to secrets using tags and Limit access to identities with tags that match secrets' tags.

For information about how to format a JSON parameter for the various command line tool environments, see Using JSON for Parameters. If your command-line tool or SDK requires quotation marks around the parameter, you should use single quotes to avoid confusion with the double quotes required in the JSON text.

The following restrictions apply to tags:

• Maximum number of tags per secret: 50

• Maximum key length: 127 Unicode characters in UTF-8

• Maximum value length: 255 Unicode characters in UTF-8

• Tag keys and values are case sensitive.

• Do not use the aws: prefix in your tag names or values because AWS reserves it for AWS use. You can't edit or delete tag names or values with this prefix. Tags with this prefix do not count against your tags per secret limit.

• If you use your tagging schema across multiple services and resources, other services might have restrictions on allowed characters. Generally allowed characters: letters, spaces, and numbers representable in UTF-8, plus the following special characters: + - = . _ : / @.

Required: No

Type: Array of Tag

Update requires: No interruption

Return values

Ref

When you pass the logical ID of an AWS::SecretsManager::Secret resource to the intrinsic Ref function, the function returns the ARN of the secret configured such as:

arn:aws:secretsmanager:us-west-2:123456789012:secret:my-path/my-secret-name-1a2b3c

If you know the ARN of a secret, you can reference a secret you created in one part of the stack template from within the definition of another resource in the same template. You typically use the Ref function with the AWS::SecretsManager::SecretTargetAttachment resource type to get references to both the secret and its associated database.

For more information about using the Ref function, see Ref.

Fn::GetAtt

The Fn::GetAtt intrinsic function returns a value for a specified attribute of this type. The following are the available attributes and sample return values.

For more information about using the Fn::GetAtt intrinsic function, see Fn::GetAtt.

Id

The ARN of the secret.

Examples

Creating a secret with a dynamically generated password

The following example creates a secret, constructing the secret value from a string template combined with a dynamically generated random password. The result of this example is a SecretString value that looks like the following:

{"username": "test-user", "password": "rzDtILsQNfmmHwkJBPsTVhkRvWRtSn" }

JSON

{
  "MySecretA": {
    "Type": "AWS::SecretsManager::Secret",
    "Properties": {
      "Name": "MySecretForAppA",
      "Description": "This secret has a dynamically generated secret password.",
      "GenerateSecretString": {
        "SecretStringTemplate": "{\"username\":\"test-user\"}",
        "GenerateStringKey": "password",
        "PasswordLength": 30,
        "ExcludeCharacters": "\"@/\\"
      },
      "Tags": [
        {
          "Key": "AppName",
          "Value": "AppA"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

YAML

#This is a Secret resource with a randomly generated password in its SecretString JSON.
MySecretA:
  Type: 'AWS::SecretsManager::Secret'
  Properties:
    Name: MySecretForAppA
    Description: "This secret has a dynamically generated secret password."
    GenerateSecretString:
      SecretStringTemplate: '{"username": "test-user"}'
      GenerateStringKey: "password"
      PasswordLength: 30
      ExcludeCharacters: '"@/\'
    Tags:
      -
        Key: AppName
        Value: AppA

Creating a secret with a hardcoded password

The following example creates a secret and provides the secret value as a literal string stored in the secret. We recommend that you don't hardcode your password this way. Instead use the SecretsManager Secret GenerateSecretString property. See the previous example for the recommended option.

JSON

{
  "MySecretB": {
    "Type": "AWS::SecretsManager::Secret",
    "Properties": {
      "Name": "MySecretForAppB",
      "Description": "This secret has a hardcoded password in SecretString (use GenerateSecretString instead)",
      "SecretString": "{\"username\":\"MasterUsername\",\"password\":\"secret-password\"}",
      "Tags": [
        {
          "Key": "AppName",
          "Value": "AppB"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

YAML

  # This is another secret that has its password hardcoded into the template (NOT RECOMMENDED)
  MySecretB:
    Type: 'AWS::SecretsManager::Secret'
    Properties:
      Name: MySecretForAppB
      Description: This secret has a hardcoded password in SecretString (use GenerateSecretString instead)
      SecretString: '{"username":"MasterUsername","password":"secret-password"}'
      Tags:
        -
          Key: AppName
          Value: AppB

Replicating a secret

The following example replicates a primary secret to us-east-1 and us-east-2.

JSON

{
   "MyReplicatedSecret":{
      "Type":"AWS::SecretsManager::Secret",
      "Properties":{
         "Name":"MyReplicatedSecret",
         "Description":"This secret is replicated to
        two regions. One with a customer managed key, and one with the AWS managed key for Secrets Manager aws/secretsmanager.",
         "ReplicaRegions":[
            {
               "Region":"us-east-1",
               "KmsKeyId":"alias/exampleAlias"
            },
            {
               "Region":"us-east-2"
            }
         ]
      }
   }
}

YAML

#This is a Secret resource which is replicated to two other regions.
MyReplicatedSecret:
  Type: AWS::SecretsManager::Secret
  Properties:
    Name: MyReplicatedSecret
    Description: 'This secret is replicated to
    two regions. One with a customer managed key, and one with the AWS managed key for Secrets Manager aws/secretsmanager.'
    ReplicaRegions:
    - Region: us-east-1
      KmsKeyId: alias/exampleAlias
    - Region: us-east-2

See also

• CreateSecret in the AWS Secrets Manager API Reference

• Create and manage secrets in the AWS Secrets Manager User Guide

• AWS::SecretsManager::ResourcePolicy

• AWS::SecretsManager::RotationSchedule

• AWS::SecretsManager::SecretReplicaRegion

• AWS::SecretsManager::SecretTargetAttachment