What is Ephemeral Secrets?
Ephemeral secrets are sensitive data items — such as passwords, tokens, or keys — that are intentionally designed to exist for a limited time period or number of accesses before being permanently and irrecoverably destroyed.
The principle behind ephemeral secrets is that the best way to protect sensitive data is to ensure it does not exist when it is no longer needed. Every moment a secret persists, it represents a potential target: it could be discovered in a breach, accessed by an unauthorized user, or leaked through a backup or log file.
Ephemeral secrets contrast with long-lived credentials like permanent API keys or static passwords. While permanent credentials are convenient, they accumulate risk over time. An API key created a year ago and shared via Slack has had a year's worth of exposure across chat logs, backups, and anyone who joined that channel since. An ephemeral credential used for a single handoff and then destroyed has a dramatically smaller attack surface.
The challenge with ephemeral secrets is ensuring that destruction is genuine and complete. Deleting a message in a chat app may not remove it from server backups. Deleting a file from a cloud drive may leave it in a recycle bin. Effective ephemeral systems combine encryption with deletion so that even if remnants of the encrypted data survive, the key material is destroyed.
How Vaulted uses Ephemeral Secrets
Every secret in Vaulted is ephemeral by design. Secrets are created with a maximum view count (1, 3, 5, 10, or unlimited) and a TTL expiration (up to 30 days). Redis atomically tracks view counts and deletes the encrypted record when the limit is reached. The TTL ensures automatic expiration regardless of views. Once deleted from Redis, the ciphertext is gone, and without the ciphertext, the key in the URL fragment is useless — the secret is permanently destroyed.