When websites are hacked, the data of millions of people are exposed. Every day, we hear about a new data breach, so what does it mean? In broad terms, data breaches happens when sensitive data falls into the hands of someone who has no business handling it.

Usually, we hear of data breaches when a company fails to keep its data secure. Since there’s a lot of information online like age, likes/dislikes, earnings, credit details, and other confidential data, data is precious to every advertiser. In one attack, hackers can steal hundreds and millions of collected information, even personal data.

To avoid data breaches, companies and private equities are investing in different security tools and measures to lower the risk of a data breach. Besides using strong passwords, encrypting your data with VPNs, and avoiding malware, individuals have to be stingy with their data. If you’re using free services, chances are it is not free- you’re just paying for it in another way.

Secrets-in-code

Secrets are digital credentials that allow entities to communicate and perform actions on a service. They are a discrete piece of information that keeps that access points secure. AWS keys and other private keys should not be hard coded. Secrets in source code are easily discoverable. Developers and other initiators incorporate credentials.

A lot of the time, the only thing that attackers do to compromise an application is to search a specific firm’s GitHub repositories for accidentally committed credentials. Thus, this is how they take over the whole system application. Secrets Codes are easily discoverable, as they are in public, such as on GitHub.

Hardcoded Secrets

Hardcoded secrets have always been a problem in organizations. The issue here is when developers hard code secrets like passwords or API keys directly into their source code. These secrets can make their way into public repositories or application package binaries and then into the attacker’s hands.

This type of vulnerability is common, especially in this digital era. Developers have left a lot of hardcoded secrets in their code base, the reason why companies have lost a lot of money, intellectual property, etc.

Top Data Breaches Cases

In 2017, Uber paid hackers to delete the stolen data of 57 million people due to their software engineers leaving AWS access keys on a public GitHub repository.

The uber employee incorporated unencrypted passwords in the source code, allowing hackers to use those credentials to access infrastructural accounts. The hackers also discovered the driver’s information and the archive of the rider.

Conclusion

Secrets are vital components for any firm or equity that requires strong protection. A sound strategy in minimizing the risk of hardcoded secrets getting leaked is scanning your code for secrets with a scanner. A scanner capable of pattern searching and entropy analysis before your code makes it to production and store secrets in configuration files or secret management services instead of writing them directly in your source code.

Rogue Logics provides in-depth security services for the assessment and protection of your application, data, and infrastructure against potential threats on-prem or in the cloud. Want a consultation with the professionals at Rogue Logics? Contact us and get a free quote.