Gitleaks

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Gitleaks is a tool for detecting secrets like passwords, API keys, and tokens in git repos, files, and whatever else you wanna throw at it via stdin. If you wanna learn more about how the detection engine works check out this blog: Regex is (almost) all you need.

➜  ~/code(master) gitleaks git -v

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Finding:     "export BUNDLE_ENTERPRISE__CONTRIBSYS__COM=cafebabe:deadbeef",
Secret:      cafebabe:deadbeef
RuleID:      sidekiq-secret
Entropy:     2.609850
File:        cmd/generate/config/rules/sidekiq.go
Line:        23
Commit:      cd5226711335c68be1e720b318b7bc3135a30eb2
Author:      John
Email:       john@users.noreply.github.com
Date:        2022-08-03T12:31:40Z
Fingerprint: cd5226711335c68be1e720b318b7bc3135a30eb2:cmd/generate/config/rules/sidekiq.go:sidekiq-secret:23

GitHub Sponsors

Sponsor @zricethezav on GitHub to get featured on this README.

Getting Started

Gitleaks can be installed using Homebrew, Docker, or Go. Gitleaks is also available in binary form for many popular platforms and OS types on the releases page. In addition, Gitleaks can be implemented as a pre-commit hook directly in your repo or as a GitHub action using Gitleaks-Action.

Installing

# MacOS
brew install gitleaks

# Docker (DockerHub)
docker pull zricethezav/gitleaks:latest
docker run -v ${path_to_host_folder_to_scan}:/path zricethezav/gitleaks:latest [COMMAND] [OPTIONS] [SOURCE_PATH]

# Docker (ghcr.io)
docker pull ghcr.io/gitleaks/gitleaks:latest
docker run -v ${path_to_host_folder_to_scan}:/path ghcr.io/gitleaks/gitleaks:latest [COMMAND] [OPTIONS] [SOURCE_PATH]

# From Source (make sure `go` is installed)
git clone https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks.git
cd gitleaks
make build

GitHub Action

Check out the official Gitleaks GitHub Action

name: gitleaks
on: [pull_request, push, workflow_dispatch]
jobs:
  scan:
    name: gitleaks
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - uses: gitleaks/gitleaks-action@v2
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          GITLEAKS_LICENSE: ${{ secrets.GITLEAKS_LICENSE}} # Only required for Organizations, not personal accounts.

Pre-Commit

1. Install pre-commit from https://pre-commit.com/#install
2. Create a .pre-commit-config.yaml file at the root of your repository with the following content:

repos: - repo: https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks rev: v8.24.2 hooks: - id: gitleaks

for a native execution of gitleaks or use the gitleaks-docker pre-commit ID for executing gitleaks using the official Docker images

1. Auto-update the config to the latest repos' versions by executing pre-commit autoupdate
2. Install with pre-commit install
3. Now you're all set!

➜ git commit -m "this commit contains a secret"
Detect hardcoded secrets.................................................Failed

Note: to disable the gitleaks pre-commit hook you can prepend SKIP=gitleaks to the commit command and it will skip running gitleaks

➜ SKIP=gitleaks git commit -m "skip gitleaks check"
Detect hardcoded secrets................................................Skipped

Usage

Gitleaks scans code, past or present, for secrets

Usage:
  gitleaks [command]

Available Commands:
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  dir         scan directories or files for secrets
  git         scan git repositories for secrets
  help        Help about any command
  stdin       detect secrets from stdin
  version     display gitleaks version

Flags:
  -b, --baseline-path string          path to baseline with issues that can be ignored
  -c, --config string                 config file path
                                      order of precedence:
                                      1. --config/-c
                                      2. env var GITLEAKS_CONFIG
                                      3. env var GITLEAKS_CONFIG_TOML with the file content
                                      4. (target path)/.gitleaks.toml
                                      If none of the four options are used, then gitleaks will use the default config
      --diagnostics string            enable diagnostics (http OR comma-separated list: cpu,mem,trace). cpu=CPU prof, mem=memory prof, trace=exec tracing, http=serve via net/http/pprof
      --diagnostics-dir string        directory to store diagnostics output files when not using http mode (defaults to current directory)
      --enable-rule strings           only enable specific rules by id
      --exit-code int                 exit code when leaks have been encountered (default 1)
  -i, --gitleaks-ignore-path string   path to .gitleaksignore file or folder containing one (default ".")
  -h, --help                          help for gitleaks
      --ignore-gitleaks-allow         ignore gitleaks:allow comments
  -l, --log-level string              log level (trace, debug, info, warn, error, fatal) (default "info")
      --max-archive-depth int         allow scanning into nested archives up to this depth (default "0", no archive traversal is done)
      --max-decode-depth int          allow recursive decoding up to this depth (default "0", no decoding is done)
      --max-target-megabytes int      files larger than this will be skipped
      --no-banner                     suppress banner
      --no-color                      turn off color for verbose output
      --redact uint[=100]             redact secrets from logs and stdout. To redact only parts of the secret just apply a percent value from 0..100. For example --redact=20 (default 100%)
  -f, --report-format string          output format (json, csv, junit, sarif, template)
  -r, --report-path string            report file
      --report-template string        template file used to generate the report (implies --report-format=template)
      --timeout int                   set a timeout for gitleaks commands in seconds (default "0", no timeout is set)
  -v, --verbose                       show verbose output from scan
      --version                       version for gitleaks

Use "gitleaks [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Commands

⚠️ v8.19.0 introduced a change that deprecated detect and protect. Those commands are still available but are hidden in the --help menu. Take a look at this gist for easy command translations. If you find v8.19.0 broke an existing command (detect/protect), please open an issue.

There are three scanning modes: git, dir, and stdin.

Git

The git command lets you scan local git repos. Under the hood, gitleaks uses the git log -p command to scan patches. You can configure the behavior of git log -p with the log-opts option. For example, if you wanted to run gitleaks on a range of commits you could use the following command: gitleaks git -v --log-opts="--all commitA..commitB" path_to_repo. See the git log documentation for more information. If there is no target specified as a positional argument, then gitleaks will attempt to scan the current working directory as a git repo.

Dir

The dir (aliases include files, directory) command lets you scan directories and files. Example: gitleaks dir -v path_to_directory_or_file. If there is no target specified as a positional argument, then gitleaks will scan the current working directory.

Stdin

You can also stream data to gitleaks with the stdin command. Example: cat some_file | gitleaks -v stdin

Creating a baseline

When scanning large repositories or repositories with a long history, it can be convenient to use a baseline. When using a baseline, gitleaks will ignore any old findings that are present in the baseline. A baseline can be any gitleaks report. To create a gitleaks report, run gitleaks with the --report-path parameter.

gitleaks git --report-path gitleaks-report.json # This will save the report in a file called gitleaks-report.json

Once as baseline is created it can be applied when running the detect command again:

gitleaks git --baseline-path gitleaks-report.json --report-path findings.json

After running the detect command with the --baseline-path parameter, report output (findings.json) will only contain new issues.

Pre-Commit hook

You can run Gitleaks as a pre-commit hook by copying the example pre-commit.py script into your .git/hooks/ directory.

Load Configuration

The order of precedence is:

1. --config/-c option: bash gitleaks git --config /home/dev/customgitleaks.toml .
2. Environment variable GITLEAKS_CONFIG with the file path: bash export GITLEAKS_CONFIG="/home/dev/customgitleaks.toml" gitleaks git .
3. Environment variable GITLEAKS_CONFIG_TOML with the file content: bash export GITLEAKS_CONFIG_TOML=`cat customgitleaks.toml` gitleaks git .
4. A .gitleaks.toml file within the target path: bash gitleaks git .

If none of the four options are used, then gitleaks will use the default config.

Configuration

Gitleaks offers a configuration format you can follow to write your own secret detection rules:

```toml

Title for the gitleaks configuration file.

title = "Custom Gitleaks configuration"

You have basically two options for your custom configuration:

1. define your own configuration, default rules do not apply

use e.g., the default configuration as starting point:

https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks/blob/master/config/gitleaks.toml

2. extend a configuration, the rules are overwritten or extended

When you extend a configuration the extended rules take precedence over the

default rules. I.e., if there are duplicate rules in both the extended

configuration and the default configuration the extended rules or

attributes of them will override the default rules.

Another thing to know with extending configurations is you can chain

together multiple configuration files to a depth of 2. Allowlist arrays are

appended and can contain duplicates.

useDefault and path can NOT be used at the same time. Choose one.

[extend]

useDefault will extend the default gitleaks config built in to the binary

the latest version is located at:

https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks/blob/master/config/gitleaks.toml

useDefault = true

or you can provide a path to a configuration to extend from.

The path is relative to where gitleaks was invoked,

not the location of the base config.

path = "common_config.toml"

If there are any rules you don't want to inherit, they can be specified here.

disabledRules = [ "generic-api-key"]

An array of tables that contain information that define instructions

on how to detect secrets

[[rules]]

Unique identifier for this rule

id = "awesome-rule-1"

Short human-readable description of the rule.

description = "awesome rule 1"

Golang regular expression used to detect secrets. Note Golang's regex engine

does not support lookaheads.

regex = '''one-go-style-regex-for-this-rule'''

Int used to extract secret from regex match and used as the group that will have

its entropy checked if entropy is set.

secretGroup = 3

Float representing the minimum shannon entropy a regex group must have to be considered a secret.

entropy = 3.5

Golang regular expression used to match paths. This can be used as a standalone rule or it can be used

in conjunction with a valid regex entry.

path = '''a-file-path-regex'''

Keywords are used for pre-regex check filtering. Rules that contain

keywords will perform a quick string compare check to make sure the

keyword(s) are in the content being scanned. Ideally these values should

either be part of the identiifer or unique strings specific to the rule's regex

(introduced in v8.6.0)

keywords = [ "auth", "password", "token", ]