Git scan secrets

Scan for Secrets

Find credentials before they reach a remote; anything already pushed is an incident, not a cleanup. Default scope: the pending diff plus commits ahead of the target branch.

Steps

1. Build the file set: git diff --name-only + git diff --cached --name-only (+ git log -p <target>..HEAD for branch commits; history scope walks git log -p --all -- <paths>).
2. Grep the patterns: -----BEGIN, AKIA[0-9A-Z]{16}, sk-, ghp_, xox[bp]-, AIza, eyJ[A-Za-z0-9_-]+\. (JWT), (password|secret|token|api[_-]?key)\s*[:=]\s*['"][^'"]+, connection strings with embedded credentials, .env-style files not covered by .gitignore.
3. Classify each hit: live secret (critical) / test or placeholder (downgrade only with evidence it is fake) / template reference (${VAR}, vault path - not a finding).
4. Report: file:line (or commit SHA for history hits), credential type, classification reasoning, redacted value.
5. Live secret not yet pushed - remove it from the commit and move the value to the environment or secret store. Already pushed - rotate first (it is compromised regardless of history), then purge per the platform procedure and add the path to .gitignore.

Verify

• Every hit classified with evidence; zero live secrets remain in the outgoing diff.

Scope / hand-off

• Invoked by dev-review-changes and the orchestrators pre-push; rotation itself belongs to the owner's secret store.

CRITICAL

• Rotation precedes any history rewrite - always.
• Never print a discovered live secret in full.
• Verify before flagging: a report full of false positives trains people to ignore it.