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vault-kv-search

vault-kv-search is a command-line tool for recursively searching for secrets within HashiCorp Vault's Key-Value (KV) stores (versions 1 and 2). It helps you quickly find where a specific value, key, or path is located across many secrets, making it an essential utility for auditing and managing your Vault environment.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Usage
  • Prerequisites
  • Command Flags
  • Examples
• Development
  • Building from Source
  • Running Tests
• License

Features

• Recursive Search: Traverses nested paths in Vault to find secrets.
• Multi-Target Search: Search within secret values, keys, or paths.
• Regex Support: Use regular expressions for powerful and flexible search patterns.
• KV v1 and v2 Support: Works seamlessly with both versions of the KV secrets engine.
• Multiple Output Formats: Choose between human-readable text and structured json output.
• Cross-Platform: Builds for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
• Search All Stores: Can automatically discover and search all mounted KV stores.

Installation

You can download the latest pre-compiled binaries for your operating system from the GitHub Releases page.

1. Download the appropriate binary for your system (e.g., vault-kv-search-linux-amd64).
2. Make the binary executable: chmod +x vault-kv-search-*
3. (Optional) Move it to a directory in your PATH for easy access: sudo mv vault-kv-search-* /usr/local/bin/vault-kv-search

Usage

Prerequisites

The tool requires the following environment variables to be set to authenticate with your Vault server:

export VAULT_ADDR="https://your-vault-server:8200"
export VAULT_TOKEN="s.YourVaultToken"

You may also need VAULT_SKIP_VERIFY=true if your Vault instance uses a self-signed certificate.

Command Flags

Usage:
  vault-kv-search [search-path] <search-string> [flags]

Flags:
  -c, --crawling-delay int   Crawling delay in milliseconds (default 15)
  -h, --help                 help for vault-kv-search
  -j, --json                 Enable JSON output
  -k, --kv-version int       KV store version
      --regex                Enable regex search
  -s, --search stringArray   What to search for: path, key, or value (default [value])
      --show-secrets         Show secret values in output
  -t, --timeout int          Vault client timeout in seconds (default 30)
      --version              version for vault-kv-search

Examples

1. Search values for a substring:

   vault-kv-search secret/production/ "api.example.com"

2. Search keys for a substring:

   vault-kv-search --search=key secret/ "username"

3. Search both keys and values:

   vault-kv-search --search=key --search=value secret/ "database"

4. Search using a regular expression:

   vault-kv-search --regex secret/ "^db-"

5. Search for a secret by its path (name):

   vault-kv-search --search=path secret/ "ssh-keys"

6. Search all mounted KV stores at once: This requires permissions to list mounts.

   vault-kv-search "sensitive-data"

7. Show the secret value in the output:

   vault-kv-search --show-secrets secret/ "password123"

8. Output results in JSON format:

   vault-kv-search --json secret/ "[email protected]"

Development

Building from Source

Prerequisites:

• Go 1.24+
• Make

To build the binary from the source code:

make vault-kv-search

The compiled binary will be available in the root of the project directory.

Running Tests

Tests use testcontainers-go to automatically start and stop Vault containers, providing complete isolation and eliminating the need for manual container management.

Prerequisites:

• Docker (Docker Desktop, Colima, or similar)

make test

Using Colima

If you're using Colima instead of Docker Desktop, you need to set the following environment variables:

export DOCKER_HOST="unix://${HOME}/.colima/default/docker.sock"
export TESTCONTAINERS_RYUK_DISABLED=true
make test

You can add these exports to your shell profile (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc) to make them persistent.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.