Note: Secret scanning was in beta in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.0. For the generally available release of secret scanning, upgrade to the latest release of GitHub Enterprise Server.
Note: Your site administrator must enable secret scanning for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance before you can use this feature. For more information, see "Configuring secret scanning for your appliance."
If your project communicates with an external service, you might use a token or private key for authentication. Tokens and private keys are examples of secrets that a service provider can issue. If you check a secret into a repository, anyone who has read access to the repository can use the secret to access the external service with your privileges. We recommend that you store secrets in a dedicated, secure location outside of the repository for your project.
Secret scanning will scan your entire Git history on all branches present in your GitHub repository for any secrets. Service providers can partner with GitHub to provide their secret formats for scanning.
If someone checks a secret with a known pattern into a repository on GitHub Enterprise Server, secret scanning catches the secret as it's checked in, and helps you mitigate the impact of the leak. Repository administrators are notified about any commit that contains a secret, and they can quickly view all detected secrets in the Security tab for the repository.
About secret scanning on GitHub Enterprise Server
Secret scanning is available on all organization-owned repositories as part of GitHub Advanced Security. It is not available on user-owned repositories.
If you're a repository administrator or an organization owner, you can enable secret scanning for repositories that are owned by organizations. You can enable secret scanning for all your repositories, or for all new repositories within your organization. For more information, see "Managing security and analysis settings for your repository" and "Managing security and analysis settings for your organization."
When you push commits to a repository with secret scanning enabled, GitHub scans the contents of the commits for secrets.
When secret scanning detects a secret in a repository, GitHub generates an alert.
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GitHub sends an email alert to the repository administrators and organization owners.
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GitHub sends an email alert to the contributor who committed the secret to the repository, with a link to the related secret scanning alert. The commit author can then view the alert in the repository, and resolve the alert.
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GitHub displays an alert in the repository.
For more information about viewing and resolving secret scanning alerts, see "Managing alerts from secret scanning."
Repository administrators and organization owners can grant users and teams access to secret scanning alerts. For more information, see "Managing security and analysis settings for your repository."
To monitor results from secret scanning across your private repositories or your organization, you can use the secret scanning API. For more information about API endpoints, see "Secret scanning."
GitHub currently scans repositories for secrets issued by the following service providers.
| Provider | Supported secret | API slug |
|---|---|---|
| Adafruit IO | Adafruit IO Key | adafruit_io_key |
| Alibaba Cloud | Alibaba Cloud Access Key ID | alibaba_cloud_access_key_id |
| Alibaba Cloud | Alibaba Cloud Access Key Secret | alibaba_cloud_access_key_secret |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Amazon AWS Access Key ID | aws_access_key_id |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Amazon AWS Secret Access Key | aws_secret_access_key |
| Atlassian | Atlassian API Token | atlassian_api_token |
| Atlassian | Atlassian JSON Web Token | atlassian_jwt |
| Azure | Azure DevOps Personal Access Token | azure_devops_personal_access_token |
| Azure | Azure SAS Token | azure_sas_token |
| Azure | Azure Service Management Certificate | azure_management_certificate |
| Azure | Azure SQL Connection String | azure_sql_connection_string |
| Azure | Azure Storage Account Key | azure_storage_account_key |
| Clojars | Clojars Deploy Token | clojars_deploy_token |
| Databricks | Databricks Access Token | databricks_access_token |
| Discord | Discord Bot Token | discord_bot_token |
| Doppler | Doppler Personal Token | doppler_personal_token |
| Doppler | Doppler Service Token | doppler_service_token |
| Doppler | Doppler CLI Token | doppler_cli_token |
| Doppler | Doppler SCIM Token | doppler_scim_token |
| Dropbox | Dropbox Access Token | dropbox_access_token |
| Dropbox | Dropbox Short Lived Access Token | dropbox_short_lived_access_token |
| Dynatrace | Dynatrace Access Token | dynatrace_access_token |
| Dynatrace | Dynatrace Internal Token | dynatrace_internal_token |
| Finicity | Finicity App Key | finicity_app_key |
| Frame.io | Frame.io JSON Web Token | frameio_jwt |
| Frame.io | Frame.io Developer Token | frameio_developer_token |
| GitHub | GitHub SSH Private Key | github_ssh_private_key |
| GoCardless | GoCardless Live Access Token | gocardless_live_access_token |
| GoCardless | GoCardless Sandbox Access Token | gocardless_sandbox_access_token |
| Google API Key | google_api_key | |
| Google Cloud Private Key ID | google_cloud_private_key_id | |
| Hashicorp Terraform | Terraform Cloud / Enterprise API Token | terraform_api_token |
| Hubspot | Hubspot API Key | hubspot_api_key |
| Mailchimp | Mailchimp API Key | mailchimp_api_key |
| Mailgun | Mailgun API Key | mailgun_api_key |
| npm | npm Access Token | npm_access_token |
| NuGet | NuGet API Key | nuget_api_key |
| Palantir | Palantir JSON Web Token | palantir_jwt |
| Postman | Postman API Key | postman_api_key |
| Proctorio | Proctorio Consumer Key | proctorio_consumer_key |
| Proctorio | Proctorio Linkage Key | proctorio_linkage_key |
| Proctorio | Proctorio Registration Key | proctorio_registration_key |
| Proctorio | Proctorio Secret Key | proctorio_secret_key |
| Pulumi | Pulumi Access Token | pulumi_access_token |
| Samsara | Samsara API Token | samsara_api_token |
| Samsara | Samsara OAuth Access Token | samsara_oauth_access_token |
| Shopify | Shopify App Shared Secret | shopify_app_shared_secret |
| Shopify | Shopify Access Token | shopify_access_token |
| Shopify | Shopify Custom App Access Token | shopify_custom_app_access_token |
| Shopify | Shopify Private App Password | shopify_private_app_password |
| Slack | Slack API Token | slack_api_token |
| Slack | Slack Incoming Webhook URL | slack_incoming_webhook_url |
| Slack | Slack Workflow Webhook URL | slack_workflow_webhook_url |
| SSLMate | SSLMate API Key | sslmate_api_key |
| SSLMate | SSLMate Cluster Secret | sslmate_cluster_secret |
| Stripe | Stripe API Key | stripe_api_key |
| Stripe | Stripe Live API Secret Key | stripe_live_secret_key |
| Stripe | Stripe Test API Secret Key | stripe_test_secret_key |
| Stripe | Stripe Live API Restricted Key | stripe_live_restricted_key |
| Stripe | Stripe Test API Restricted Key | stripe_test_restricted_key |
| Tencent Cloud | Tencent Cloud Secret ID | tencent_cloud_secret_id |
| Twilio | Twilio Account String Identifier | twilio_account_sid |
| Twilio | Twilio API Key | twilio_api_key |
Note: Secret scanning does not currently allow you to define your own patterns for detecting secrets.