How to Find API Keys Leaked in Public Repositories

API keys act as digital credentials, providing access to various services like cloud storage, payment gateways, and databases. Unfortunately, many developers unintentionally expose these keys by committing them to public repositories like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Attackers can exploit these leaks to gain unauthorized access to critical resources, leading to data breaches and financial loss.

In this guide, we’ll explore various techniques to find API keys leaked in public repositories, the risks associated with such exposures, and how to prevent them.

Developers often push sensitive credentials by mistake while working on projects.Lack of awareness about secrets management..env or .config files containing API keys might not be excluded from commits.Improper use of .gitignore leads to unintended exposure.Forking a private repository and making it public can expose secrets.Contributing to open-source projects without sanitizing credentials.API keys logged in error messages or debugging output may remain in repositories.Storing sensitive credentials in plaintext within pipeline scripts.Hardcoding API keys in YAML files.

GitHub’s search feature allows you to look for patterns indicating exposed credentials.

Steps:

Go to GitHub Search.Use search queries like:filename:.env API_KEY filename:config.json AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEYLook for repository history using: