Docker Sandboxes Network Credentials

Docker Sandboxes: Network Policy & Credentials

Overview

This skill owns sbx policy (network egress) and sbx secret (service secrets and registry credentials). The proxy enforces egress policy and injects stored credentials on matching domains. Proxy-managed sentinels are not usable upstream credentials, but OAuth passthrough can expose real tokens to the sandbox. Egress policy does not protect a real credential once leaked outside the sandbox; revoke or rotate a leaked credential.

When to use this skill

Activate this skill when:

• The user wants to allow, deny, or inspect which hosts a sandbox (or all sandboxes) can reach.

• The user wants to give an agent an API key, OAuth token, or other service credential without exposing the raw value inside the sandbox.

• The user wants to pull a private template image or kit from a registry that requires authentication.

• The user is debugging a blocked network request or a credential that isn't being injected.

Do not use this skill when

Do not use this skill when:

• The task is running docker agent run --sandbox or managing its docker agent sandbox allowlist — use docker-agent-run. If the CLI is unclear, establish whether the user runs Docker Agent or standalone sbx before choosing commands.

• The task is creating, reattaching to, or removing a sandbox itself — use docker-sandboxes-lifecycle.

• The task is declaring secrets/registries/bindings inside a checked-in sbxenv.yaml file — use docker-sandboxes-env for the file format (this skill's rules on precedence and injection scope still apply to what that file provisions).

• The task is declaring a kit's own credentials:/permissions.network: block in a spec.yaml — use docker-sandboxes-kits for the schema (this skill's model of what those declarations mean at runtime still applies).

Core guidance

Network policy: global, per-sandbox, and precedence

• The global network policy must be initialized once before creating the first sandbox: sbx policy init <allow-all|balanced|deny-all>. balanced is the recommended starting point (typical dev traffic — AI services, package registries — allowed). This is a one-time setup.

• sbx policy reset is destructive: it deletes the entire local policy store and stops the daemon and every currently running sandbox. The daemon restarts on the next daemon-backed command. It is not a lightweight way to "start over" or a routine diagnostic step — never propose it as a first troubleshooting move for a single misbehaving rule. Use targeted sbx policy rm network (by --id or --resource) to remove one rule instead; reserve sbx policy reset for when the policy store itself needs to be rebuilt from scratch, and warn the user that it will stop running sandboxes before running it.

• Add rules with sbx policy allow network RESOURCES / sbx policy deny network RESOURCES. RESOURCES is a comma-separated list of exact hosts, *.example.com single-label wildcards, **.example.com multi-label wildcards, optional :port suffixes, CIDR prefixes, or ** for "all hosts".

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  sbx policy init balanced
  sbx policy allow network "api.example.com,cdn.example.com"
  sbx policy deny network ads.example.com

• Deny always wins over allow for the same hostname/CIDR when both match. An allowed hostname is not checked against CIDR deny rules for its resolved IP.

• A rule applies globally by default. Pass --sandbox NAME to scope it to one sandbox's local policy instead:

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  sbx policy allow network --sandbox my-sandbox api.example.com

• At creation time only, sbx create/sbx run accept --deny-network RESOURCE (repeatable) to add a per-sandbox deny rule. This is safe to expose even under centralized (org) governance because a local deny can only narrow, never widen, egress — it can never override an org-level allow into a broader grant.

• Use sbx policy check network [--sandbox NAME] TARGET to test what the current policy would do for a host/URL before it matters, and sbx policy log [SANDBOX] to see what was actually allowed or blocked historically, with the matching rule.

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  sbx policy check network --sandbox my-sandbox api.example.com:443
  sbx policy log my-sandbox --json

• sbx policy ls [SANDBOX] [--wide] lists active policies/rules; --wide adds rule IDs (needed for sbx policy rm network --id) and per-resource status. sbx policy inspect <policy-or-rule> gives full detail including each rule's exact removal command or the reason it is read-only (e.g. org-managed). To remove a sandbox-scoped rule, retain --sandbox NAME; omitting it targets the global policy instead:

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  sbx policy rm network --sandbox my-sandbox --resource api.example.com
  sbx policy check network --sandbox my-sandbox api.example.com

  Removing one rule does not determine the final decision; other matching rules still apply.

Service secrets: how injection works

• sbx secret set [SERVICE] stores a credential the proxy uses to authenticate outbound requests on behalf of the agent. In the normal proxy-managed flow, the sandbox sees a sentinel rather than the raw secret; the proxy substitutes the real value on requests to the domains the matching kit/binding declares.

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  sbx secret set github                       # interactive
  printf '%s' "$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" | sbx secret set anthropic

  Storing a secret does not grant network access. Egress is governed separately by sbx policy; check the target domain in the intended scope before debugging authentication:

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  sbx policy check network --sandbox my-sandbox api.anthropic.com

• OAuth passthrough is an exception, not a no-secret-exposure guarantee. When a kit sets oauth.passthrough: true without a refresh sentinel, the proxy forwards the real token response to the sandbox. The built-in devin kit uses this mode. Review the agent's credential configuration before promising that it cannot read a token; do not enable passthrough merely to bypass an authentication failure. Even with sentinels, the agent can exercise the credential's permissions on allowed services — restrict token privileges as well as network access.

• Service secrets are global by default; --sandbox NAME scopes one to a single sandbox.

• Dynamic secrets resolve the value on the host at use time instead of storing it directly: --ref (1Password op://... or an AWS Secrets Manager ARN — requires an authenticated op/aws CLI) or --command (runs a shell command and uses its stdout). --refresh controls the resolution/cache policy (default 55m, or on-demand).

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  sbx secret set anthropic --ref 'op://Private/Anthropic/api-key'
  sbx secret set github --command 'gh auth token'

  --command and --ref are resolved on the host, with your own privileges, and treated as trusted execution — never point --command at anything an untrusted file or an agent's own output could influence.

• Never pass a secret as a plain --env value or as a --kit-arg / --env-arg value. Both land as literal, unmasked text — in the sandbox's environment, in sbx env plan's state file, and potentially in shell history — defeating the entire point of the credential store. Use sbx secret set (or sbxenv.yaml's secrets:/registries: blocks, which route through the same store) instead.

• sbx secret set-custom (experimental) covers a service sbx has no built-in support for: the sandbox sees a placeholder value in an env var you name (--env), and the proxy swaps in the real secret only on requests to the --host pattern(s) you declare.

• sbx secret ls [--global|--sandbox NAME] [--service NAME] [--json] lists what is stored, without revealing values. sbx secret rm [SERVICE] [--sandbox NAME] [--all|--registry HOST] [--force] removes it.

• sbx secret import [SERVICE] [--all] [--dry-run] [--force] offers to import secrets already sitting in host environment variables (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY, GH_TOKEN) into the global store, prompting per entry unless --all/--force. A service with an OAuth token already configured is skipped — OAuth takes precedence at runtime over an imported API key.

Registry credentials: host-pulls-only by default, two distinct injection scopes

• sbx secret set --registry HOST --password-stdin (optionally --username) stores pull credentials for a container registry, used to pull private template images and kit artifacts. Unlike service secrets, registry credentials are host-only by default: they authenticate pulls on the host and are never injected into any sandbox.

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  gh auth token | sbx secret set --registry ghcr.io --password-stdin

• --all-sandboxes and --sandbox widen this differently — do not confuse them:

  • --all-sandboxes: credentials are used for host pulls and injected by the proxy into every new sandbox's registry login (the credential itself never enters the sandbox filesystem).

  • --sandbox NAME: credentials are injected into that one sandbox only.

  • Neither flag: host-pulls-only, injected nowhere.

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  gh auth token | sbx secret set --all-sandboxes --registry ghcr.io --password-stdin
  gh auth token | sbx secret set --sandbox my-sandbox --registry ghcr.io --password-stdin

• For a registry whose Bearer auth endpoint lives on a different hostname than the registry itself, pass --registry-auth-endpoint naming the exact trusted HTTPS URL — otherwise the cross-host token exchange is rejected.

• sbx secret rm --registry HOST --sandbox NAME removes only that sandbox's registry credential; host-only and global (all-sandboxes) entries are untouched. This does not revoke the upstream token or prevent use of another applicable credential.

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  sbx secret rm --registry ghcr.io --sandbox my-sandbox

• Without --sandbox, sbx secret rm --registry HOST removes both the host-only and global entries. Add --all-sandboxes to remove only the global entry instead.

Related skills

• For docker agent run --sandbox and docker agent sandbox commands, use docker-agent-run.

• For creating, reattaching to, and removing the sandboxes these policies and secrets apply to, use docker-sandboxes-lifecycle.

• For declaring secrets:/registries:/bindings: inside a checked-in sbxenv.yaml file that provisions them at environment-create time, use docker-sandboxes-env.

• For a kit's own credentials: and permissions.network: declarations (what a kit asks for, as opposed to what the user has approved), use docker-sandboxes-kits.

References

• references/sources.md — provenance for every rule above (help captures, source paths, docs URLs).

Assets

• None.

Checks

• checks/verification.md — Verification runbook for network policy and secret commands (unexecuted runbook; run manually with an isolated --app-name, no real secret values).