Use GitHub Actions OIDC id-token to authenticate to cloud providers without long-lived credentials
domain: docs.github.com/actions/security-for-github-actions/security-hardening-your-deployments · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Add `id-token: write` permission to the GitHub Actions job
For AWS: configure an IAM OIDC identity provider with issuer `https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com` and create an IAM role with a trust policy that matches your repo's subject claim (`repo:<org>/<repo>:ref:refs/heads/main`)
Use the official `aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials` action with `role-to-assume` to exchange the OIDC token for temporary AWS credentials
For GCP: create a Workload Identity Pool and Provider; use `google-github-actions/auth` to exchange the token for a GCP access token
Validate the assumed identity in your pipeline by calling the cloud provider's identity API and confirming the role/service account matches expectations
Known gotchas
The OIDC subject claim includes branch, tag, or PR context; trust policies must be scoped tightly (e.g., only `refs/heads/main`) to prevent feature branches from assuming production roles
OIDC tokens are short-lived (default 60 minutes on GitHub); long-running jobs that need cloud credentials beyond that window must re-request credentials mid-job
Some cloud providers differentiate between environment-level and branch-level claims; using GitHub Environments adds an `environment:` component to the subject claim that must be included in the trust policy
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