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Have My Keys Been Pwned? API Edition: Hunting Leaked Credentials in Public Repos

Rod Soto

Rod Soto explores how developers inadvertently leak cloud API keys and SSH secrets in public repositories, demonstrating automated hunting and abuse vectors.

Summary

The Proliferation of Hardcoded Secrets in DevOps

Rapid CI/CD release cycles and distributed developer workflows frequently lead to hardcoded API keys, database credentials, and cloud tokens committed to code repositories.

Automated Git Reconnaissance and Secret Scraping

Rod Soto demonstrates how attackers and threat hunting bots scan public GitHub repositories, commit histories, and gists in real time for cryptographic secrets.

Weaponizing Leaked Cloud API Keys for Tenant Takeover

The speaker illustrates how leaked AWS access keys and cloud service tokens allow attackers to escalate privileges and access sensitive backend databases.

Preventative Controls and Automated Secret Scanning

The presentation provides DevOps and security engineers with pre-commit secret detection hooks, secret rotation policies, and cloud secret management best practices.

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