How to use Boto3 to get the secret keys as plain text from binary/encrypted format in AWS Secret Manager

Problem Statement: Use boto3 library in Python to get the secret keys as plain text from binary/encrypted format present in AWS Secret Manager

Approach/Algorithm to solve this problem

• Step 1: Import boto3 and botocore exceptions to handle exceptions.

• Step 2: secret_stored_location is the required parameter. It is a place where secrets are saved.

• Step 3: Create an AWS session using boto3 lib. Make sure region_name is mentioned in the default profile. If it is not mentioned, then explicitly pass the region_name while creating the session.

• Step 4: Create an AWS client for secretmanager.

• Step 5: Call get_secret_value and pass the secret_stored_location as SecretId.

• Step 6: Check whether it is plain text or encrypted one.

• Step 7: If it is encrypted one, call the function to decode binary values using base64.b64decode

• Step 8: It returns all the secrets as decrypted mode, i.e., plain text in the given location.

• Step 9: Handle the generic exception if something went wrong while retrieving values.

Example Code

Use the following code to get the decrypted plain text secret from AWS secret Manager −

import boto3
from botocore.exceptions import ClientError

def get_decrypted_secret_details(secret_stored_location):
   session = boto3.session.Session()
   s3_client = session.client('secretmanager')
   try:
   response = s3_client.get_secret_value(SecretId=secret_stored_location)
   if not ('SecretString' in response):
      decoded_secret_values = base64.b64decode(response['SecretBinary'])
   return decoded_secret_values
      except ClientError as e:
         raise Exception("boto3 client error in get_decrypted_secret_details: " + e.__str__())
      except Exception as e:
         raise Exception("Unexpected error in get_decrypted_secret_details: " + e.__str__())

a = get_decrypted_secret_details('/secrets/aws')
print(a)

Output

{"user":"SERVICE_USER","accesskey":"I**************"}