GitHub Security Enhancements: Addressing 39M Leaked Secrets in 2024
TL;DR
- GitHub reported 39 million secrets leaked in 2024, highlighting a significant security risk.
- New tools and features have been introduced to enhance secret protection and code security.
- These updates aim to make security more accessible and improve secret management across repositories.
Main Content
GitHub Security Enhancements: Addressing 39M Leaked Secrets in 2024
GitHub's Response to 39 Million Leaked Secrets
GitHub, the Microsoft-owned code hosting platform, has announced a significant security enhancement following the discovery of 39 million leaked secrets in 2024. This exposure of sensitive information, such as API keys, poses a serious risk to organizations, as malicious actors can exploit these leaks for attacks. Developers often underestimate the risk of exposing secrets, which can lead to lateral movement by attackers. Storing secrets in git history increases vulnerability, and accidental public exposures hit record highs in 2024.
“To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, more than 39 million secrets were leaked across GitHub in 2024 alone. Every minute GitHub blocks several secrets with push protection.” reads the report published by GitHub. “Still, secret leaks remain one of the most common—and preventable—causes of security incidents. As we develop code faster than ever previously imaginable, we’re leaking secrets faster than ever, too.”
New Security Tools and Features
GitHub has launched new tools to help developers and organizations secure sensitive data in their code. The company introduced several Advanced Security features, including standalone Secret Protection and Code Security, support for GitHub Team orgs, and free secret scanning. Secret Protection is now free for public repositories.
GitHub now offers standalone security add-ons for Team organizations, eliminating the need for Enterprise upgrades. To prevent leaks, GitHub enables Team and Enterprise users to run secret risk assessments across all repositories, enhancing security.
“The secret risk assessment is a point-in-time scan leveraging our scanning engine for organizations, covering all repositories–public, private, internal, and even archived–and can be run without purchase. The point-in-time scan provides clear insights into the exposure of your secrets across your organization, along with actionable steps to strengthen your security and protect your code.” concludes the report. “In order to lower barriers for organizations to use and benefit from the feature, no specific secrets are stored or shared.” GitHub notes.
Enhanced Push Protection and AI Integration
GitHub Advanced Security introduces major updates to enhance secret protection and code security. Now available as standalone products, these tools no longer require a full GitHub Advanced Security license, making them more accessible to smaller teams.
GitHub has also enhanced push protection with delegated bypass controls, allowing organizations to define who can override security measures, adding policy-level enforcement. AI-powered secret detection using GitHub Copilot improves accuracy by identifying unstructured secrets like passwords, reducing false positives.
To further strengthen security, GitHub has partnered with cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and OpenAI to improve secret detection and response times.
Best Practices and Recommendations
The Microsoft-owned company also recommends best practices such as enabling Push Protection, eliminating hardcoded secrets, and using secret managers, environment variables, or CI/CD-integrated tools to reduce human error and exposure risks.
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