[stiankri]

Today people are using the SDK directly or injecting secrets via the CLI. Multi-language support and integration with e.g. Kubernetes is high on the wish list. The approach we are looking at for multi-language support is to drop the dependency on the AWS Encryption SDK. Creating a read-only SDK in other languages is then straight forward.

[rad_gruchalski]

Sure, but what if the language I'm using is not high on your priority list? Isn't it easier to add a high level rest api?

[stiankri]

That is certainly one approach we have looked at. The question then is where would you run the REST API? As a side car, as a separate service, e.g. using AWS API Gateway and Lambdas?

If you look at the work required to write a simplified read-only client using the AWS SDK for KMS and DynamoDB, while perhaps a bit more work than integrating with a REST API, it is not that far off, which is why we are considering that approach. That would of course not help if you are using a language that does not have an AWS SDK.

[rad_gruchalski]

All AWS SDKs use the underlying REST(ey) API. The SDKs are literally machine generated. I can download the WSDLs or take these files https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/tree/master/models/apis and generate one myself.

[auspex]

Any of the suggestions above would most likely work. Running an API sidecar or separate service would just be the cost of exposing the REST API.

I could definitely envision people deciding against using your key store when comparing to something like Vault based just on the fact that you limit extensibility with no API.