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scanning-for-hardcoded-secrets

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Scan a source-code tree for hardcoded credentials embedded in source files: AWS access keys, GitHub tokens, Stripe keys, Slack tokens, Anthropic API keys, OpenAI keys, JWT signing secrets, generic base64-encoded passwords, RSA / SSH private keys, and high-entropy string literals that pattern-match common credential shapes. Use when: pre-commit gate before pushing a feature branch, audit before SOC2, post-incident scan after a leak, or inheriting a codebase you didn't write. Threshold: any source file contains a string that matches a canonical credential regex (AWS AKIA prefix, GitHub ghp_ prefix, etc.) OR a string with Shannon entropy above 4.5 in a field [Credential-related source omitted] Trigger with: "scan secrets", "credential scan", "find hardcoded keys", "leak check".

skills/.curated/scanning-for-hardcoded-secrets/SKILL.md

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Last checked
Nov 12, 2026

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2,917
Repository last updated
Nov 12, 2026
License
MIT

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# Scanning for Hardcoded Secrets

## Overview

The single most common cause of credential breach in 2026 remains
hardcoded secrets in source code. Engineers paste an API key into a
config file "just for testing," forget to remove it, commit the
file. The credential is now in the repository's history forever
(`git rebase` doesn't help if anyone cloned in between) and
extractable by anyone who reaches the repo: contractors,
ex-employees, attackers via `.git/` directory exposure (see skill
six), GitHub bot scrapers crawling public repos.

The cost of detection-after-commit is near-zero (free tools exist:
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