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DevOps & Automation · Intermediate

Secret Scanning

Automatically detecting credentials such as API keys, tokens, and passwords committed to source repositories.

Definition

Scanners such as GitHub secret scanning with push protection, gitleaks, and truffleHog block or alert on exposed secrets. A leaked secret must be revoked and rotated, since removing it from history is not enough.

Example

GitHub push protection rejects a push containing an AWS access key.

Exam tip

Always rotate a leaked credential; deleting the commit does not make it safe.

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