Native OIDC Token Exchange for Pulumi CLI — Pulumi Blog

Managing credentials in CI/CD pipelines has always involved tradeoffs. Long-lived access tokens are convenient but create security risks when they leak or fall into the wrong hands. Short-lived credentials are more secure but require additional tooling to obtain and manage. Today, we’re eliminating this tradeoff with native OIDC token exchange support in the Pulumi CLI.

The Pulumi CLI now includes built-in support for exchanging OIDC tokens from your identity provider for short-lived Pulumi Cloud access tokens. This means you can authenticate to Pulumi Cloud directly from CI/CD environments like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Kubernetes without storing any long-lived Pulumi credentials as secrets.

Why OIDC token exchange matters

Most CI/CD workflows authenticate to Pulumi Cloud using personal access tokens or organization tokens stored as secrets. While this approach works, it comes with significant security concerns:

Credential exposure: If a token is accidentally committed to a repository or logged in CI output, attackers gain long-term access to your infrastructure
Rotation complexity: Rotating tokens requires updating secrets across multiple CI/CD systems
Over-privileged access: Tokens often have broader permissions than needed for specific workflows
Audit trail gaps: Difficult to trace which workflow run used which credentials

With OIDC token exchange, you eliminate these risks by leveraging short-lived tokens that your CI/CD platform or identity provider already issues. No long-lived secrets to manage, rotate, or secure.

How it works

The pulumi login command now accepts OIDC tokens directly:

pulumi login --oidc-token  --oidc-org

The CLI exchanges your OIDC token for a short-lived Pulumi Cloud access token, which is then used for all subsequent operations. Tokens expire after 2 hours by default, though you can customize this with the --oidc-expiration flag.

You can scope tokens to specific teams or users:

# Scope to a team
pulumi login --oidc-token  --oidc-org my-org --oidc-team platform-team

# Scope to a user
pulumi login --oidc-token  --oidc-org my-org --oidc-user alice

The --oidc-token flag accepts either a raw token string or a file path prefixed with file://, making it easy to integrate with various token delivery mechanisms.

Example: Kubernetes (EKS)

For workloads running in Kubernetes, you can use service account tokens and exchange them for Pulumi access tokens. The following example uses a Pulumi program to define a Kubernetes Job resource.

import * as kubernetes from "@pulumi/kubernetes";

const script = new kubernetes.core.v1.ConfigMap("script", {
 data: {
 "entrypoint.sh": `#!/bin/bash
EKS_ID_TOKEN=$(cat /var/run/secrets/eks.amazonaws.com/serviceaccount/token)
pulumi login --oidc-token $EKS_ID_TOKEN --oidc-org MY_ORG_NAME
pulumi whoami
`
 }
});

const job = new kubernetes.batch.v1.Job("runner", {
 metadata: {},
 spec: {
 template: {
 spec: {
 serviceAccountName: "pulumi-service-account",
 containers: [{
 name: "runner",
 image: "pulumi/pulumi:latest",
 command: ["/bin/entrypoint.sh"],
 volumeMounts: [
 {
 name: "script",
 mountPath: "/bin/entrypoint.sh",
 readOnly: true,
 subPath: "entrypoint.sh",
 },
 ],
 }],
 restartPolicy: "Never",
 volumes: [
 {
 name: "script",
 configMap: {
 defaultMode: 0o700,
 name: script.metadata.name,
 },
 },
 ],
 },
 },
 backoffLimit: 0,
 },
});

export const jobName = job.metadata.name;

This approach works with any Kubernetes cluster that supports service account token projection, including EKS, GKE, and AKS. The example uses EKS’s default token location at /var/run/secrets/eks.amazonaws.com/serviceaccount/token, but you can adapt the token path for other Kubernetes distributions.

Prerequisites

Before using OIDC token exchange with the Pulumi CLI, you need to:

Register your OIDC provider as a trusted issuer in your Pulumi organization settings
Configure authorization policies that specify which tokens can be exchanged and what permissions they receive
Ensure your CI/CD system or identity provider is configured to issue OIDC tokens with the appropriate audience claim

Get started

Native OIDC token exchange is available now in the latest version of the Pulumi CLI. To get started:

Update to the latest Pulumi CLI version
Configure your OIDC provider and authorization policies in Pulumi Cloud
Update your CI/CD workflows to use pulumi login --oidc-token

For complete documentation, including setup guides for specific identity providers, see:

We’re excited to see how this feature helps you build more secure infrastructure automation workflows. If you have questions or feedback, join us in the Pulumi Community Slack.