External Secrets Operator integrates with Nebius MysteryBox.
Nebius Mysterybox supports the following authentication methods:
auth.workloadIdentity: request a Kubernetes service account token via the TokenRequest API and exchange it for a Nebius IAM token using workload federation.auth.serviceAccountCredsSecretRef: read Nebius service account credentials JSON from a Kubernetes Secret and exchange it for a Nebius IAM token.auth.tokenSecretRef: read an already issued Nebius IAM token from a Kubernetes Secret.Find more about the authorization option following the official documentation.
Before you start, create a service account and grant it permission to read desired secrets in MysteryBox. For details on required roles and permissions, see MysteryBox get method.
You will need to create a Kubernetes Secret with desired auth parameters and structure. The Kubernetes secret must be in a Subject Credentials format:
{
"subject-credentials": {
"alg": "RS256",
"private-key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\n<private-key>\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
"kid": "<public-key-ID>",
"iss": "<service_account_ID>",
"sub": "<service_account_ID>"
}
}
Follow the instruction to generate the secret. The SecretStore example below uses this authentication method.
ESO assumes that this Nebius-side federation setup already exists and only performs runtime token exchange.
To use Workload Identity:
ServiceAccount.system:serviceaccount:<namespace>:<service-account-name> as the federated subject;create on serviceaccounts/token).Reference both service accounts in the store:
auth:
workloadIdentity:
serviceAccountRef:
name: <kubernetes-service-account-name>
iamServiceAccountID: <nebius-iam-service-account-id>
For a SecretStore, the Kubernetes service account must be in the same namespace as the store. For a ClusterSecretStore, set serviceAccountRef.namespace explicitly.
First, create a SecretStore with a Nebius MysteryBox backend.
{% include 'nebius-mysterybox-secret-store.yaml' %}
You can get a secret by its secretID and key.
{% include 'nebius-mysterybox-external-secret-by-key.yaml' %}
Another way is to get a full secret that will be imported. When fetching the full secret, each key–value pair from MysteryBox is mapped to a separate entry in the target Kubernetes Secret’s data field.
{% include 'nebius-mysterybox-external-secret-all.yaml' %}
Example of a target secret:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: <your-k8s-secret-name>
type: Opaque
data:
<entry-key-1>: <base64-of-value-1>
<entry-key-2>: <base64-of-value-2>
There is also a possibility to specify Version variable to get a secret.
...
data:
- secretKey: <secretKey>
remoteRef:
key: <secretID>
version: <secretVersion>
!!! tip inline end
When the `version` field is not specified, a primary version of the secret will be retrieved.