git-secrets VS ggshield

Well, this doesn't really happen at places that don't suck. They had no least privilege access to critical secrets and no processes (like pre-commit hooks using git-secrets) to prevent them being committed.

# macOS brew install git-secrets # Linux git clone https://github.com/awslabs/git-secrets.git cd git-secrets make install

You could use Git hooks to prevent someone from being able to author a commit when you suspect there is a secret being committed. In addition to this, you could also perform this check server-side, in case someone did not run their Git hooks for whatever reason. For example, check out git-secrets.

git-secrets

Install git-secrets. Go into each of your repos, scan for past mistakes, and add a git-commit hook:

I agree that code scanning is really important, the best way to convince others is to identify high-risk threats in source code and present them to the decision-makers. For example, scanning Secrets is great for showing how repositories can be a massive vulnerability and identifying some low-hanging fruit, especially in the git history. Attackers are really after git repository access for this reason and there are plenty of open-source or free tools that you can use to illustrate the problem. Git-Secrets, Truffle Hog. These aren't great for a long-term commercial solution, something like GitGuardian is a better commercial tool but if the goal is just to illustrate the problem then finding some high-value secrets with free tools is a good way to convince the security personnel to invest in some solutions. Then the door is open to having more conversations as you have already proven the risk.

I worked for a big startup last year and was on a contract deadline for integrating a vendor framework into a React Native app.

It was taking too long to get a new temp demo license key and GitHub search with clever filters helped me track down a demo key that was recently uploaded to a test repo.

This is also why I use git-secrets in my repos.

https://github.com/awslabs/git-secrets

Under the covers, it is simply looking up an 'ignore' list stored in YML during each scan. If you are building your own, you might also want to see how AWS Labs is doing it in their solution git secrets.

For secrets scanning you can implement ggshield precommit hook. : https://github.com/GitGuardian/ggshield

I believe you'll get all the information you need on their website

The GitGuardian's CLI, ggshield, was recently updated to support IaC misconfigurations scanning: it's as easy as  ggshield iac scan path_to_iac_main_folder.

If you want to build a configuration from an example, you can find a sample config file at https://github.com/GitGuardian/ggshield/blob/main/.gitguardian.example.yml.

I agree that code scanning is really important, the best way to convince others is to identify high-risk threats in source code and present them to the decision-makers. For example, scanning Secrets is great for showing how repositories can be a massive vulnerability and identifying some low-hanging fruit, especially in the git history. Attackers are really after git repository access for this reason and there are plenty of open-source or free tools that you can use to illustrate the problem. Git-Secrets, Truffle Hog. These aren't great for a long-term commercial solution, something like GitGuardian is a better commercial tool but if the goal is just to illustrate the problem then finding some high-value secrets with free tools is a good way to convince the security personnel to invest in some solutions. Then the door is open to having more conversations as you have already proven the risk.

First up is the leaked TLS private key. Poor Corp added their wildcard certificate to their GitLab image, but they didn’t consider that anyone could steal the private key from the Docker image once published on Docker Hub. Rather than adding sensitive files and hardcoded environment variables to their containers while they were being built, Poor Corp should have used runtime environment variables and mounted volumes to pass secrets into the container—by the way, ggshield, the secrets detection CLI from GitGuardian, has a command for scanning Docker images. If you find that you’ve also made this mistake, you need to immediately revoke any certificates or credentials that were exposed.

GitGuardian’s CLI, ggshield, can be installed as a pre-commit hook on a developer’s workstation to act like a security seatbelt preventing any secret from being committed locally in the first place. If a developer chooses to bypass the guardrail and push a secret anyway, the event is reported in the GitGuardian dashboard. This allows security teams to have eyes on any possible policy issues as developers build—all without holding up their progress. These tools can detect risks, watch for vulnerabilities, and notify the right people in a non-intrusive way.

ggshield is one of the tools we develop at GitGuardian to help secure the codebase. Integrated as a hook it will scan the content of the git patch to make sure it does not contains any secret like an API token.