Unified Authentication and Key Rotation

⚠️ Pending Update · 2026-08-29 Verification · Content may be outdated, please refer to official docs Updated: 2026-08-29 · Status: Pending Verification

Background

When applications talk directly to model providers, keys are scattered across config files, CI variables, and container envs. A single leak means a full rotation plus rolling restart, and different team members holding their own keys makes auditing painful. Funneling every key into the gateway changes the picture: clients see only one APISHARE_TOKEN, and rotation, revocation, and quota slicing all happen inside the gateway.

Core Design

• Two-layer tokens: the outer layer is the APISHARE_TOKEN issued to clients (long-lived, revocable); the inner layer is the upstream provider key (short-lived, rotatable). The two are decoupled, so rotating the inner layer never disturbs clients.
• Key pool and rotation: each provider maintains a pool of keys bucketed by hash. Rotation shifts 10% of traffic to the new key first, watches 5xx/429 ratios, then decides on full cutover.
• Least privilege: each upstream key carries a scope (read-models / invoke / billing-query); the client token also carries a scope, and the gateway enforces both layers.
• Audit log: every key fetch is logged with timestamp, client ID, provider, and a key hash (never plaintext).
• Vault backend: keys are KMS-encrypted at rest, decrypted into memory on demand; plaintext never touches disk.

Code Example

import hashlib, time

class KeyVault:
    def __init__(self, kms):
        self.kms = kms
        # provider -> list of encrypted key blobs
        self.pool = {"groq": [...], "deepseek": [...]}
        # rolling index for round-robin
        self.idx = 0

    def get(self, provider: str, client_id: str) -> str:
        keys = self.pool[provider]
        chosen = keys[self.idx % len(keys)]
        self.idx += 1
        plaintext = self.kms.decrypt(chosen)
        self._audit(client_id, provider, plaintext)
        return plaintext

    def _audit(self, client_id, provider, key):
        h = hashlib.sha256(key.encode()).hexdigest()[:12]
        print(f"[audit] {time.time()} client={client_id} "
              f"provider={provider} key={h}")

Rotation Safety Boundary

The biggest risk in key rotation is "rotating the wrong one" — revoking a healthy key while leaving a bad one, or pushing a new key live before it activates, dropping traffic to zero. Safe boundary practice: rotate one key at a time, ramp traffic in four stages — 1%, 10%, 50%, 100% — each lasting an hour, watching the 401 ratio; rollback on anomaly. Maintain a "primary + standby" pool: a new key validates in the standby pool for 24 hours before being promoted to primary, eliminating "new key is bad key" scenarios.

Best Practices

• Rotation cadence: rotate free keys every 30 days and paid keys every 90 days; trigger an early rotation if anomalous 401 ratios cross threshold.
• Zero trust: even internal team members get only the client token — they never see upstream key plaintext.
• Degradation plan: if KMS fails, keys already loaded in memory remain usable, but new keys must be blocked from the pool to prevent mis-rotation.
• Leak response: on detecting a leak, complete revocation and new-key activation within 5 minutes using a pre-written automation script.

Centralizing keys is not "putting all eggs in one basket" — it is "replacing the basket with a vaulted room."

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