Coding Agents Copy Your Secrets to a Hidden File. Thousands Are on GitHub

Databreaches • November 7, 2026

Apiiro research found 2,539 real secrets in 1,994 public GitHub repositories: database passwords, cloud keys, API tokens, SSH root logins. Among them: a database vendor’s own admin-level cloud key, a production Azure Postgres password, a Square production token, and the owner password of a medical-records database. 63 organizations, mostly software companies of all sizes, are affected. One confirmed its key had been live. Ask Claude Code to check a database or call an API, and the command it proposes carries the secret from your config file. It asks before running it. Pick “Yes, and don’t ask again” and it saves that exact command, secret included, to .claude/settings.local.json inside the project folder. Nothing in the repo marks that file as private, so it gets committed with the rest of the code. Out of 104,185 public copies of this file on GitHub, 1,122 hold a real secret. We found 1,160 more in git history, in the shared settings.json teams commit on purpose, and in agent chat transcripts saved in repos. GitHub is just where we could count. The same file sits in plain text on every laptop where someone clicked “don’t ask again.”

Ask Claude Code to check a database or call an API, and the command it proposes carries the secret from your config file. It asks before running it. Pick “Yes, and don’t ask again” and it saves that exact command, secret included, to .claude/settings.local.json inside the project folder. Nothing in the repo marks that file as private, so it gets committed with the rest of the code.

Out of 104,185 public copies of this file on GitHub, 1,122 hold a real secret. We found 1,160 more in git history, in the shared settings.json teams commit on purpose, and in agent chat transcripts saved in repos.

GitHub is just where we could count. The same file sits in plain text on every laptop where someone clicked “don’t ask again.”

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Claude Code Exposes Secrets in Public GitHub Repositories Research by Apiiro revealed that Claude Code, an AI coding assistant, has inadvertently saved sensitive information such as passwords and API keys in a hidden file (.claude/settings.local.json) within public GitHub repositories. This issue affects 1,122 copies of the file across 1,994 repositories, with at least 2,539 real secrets identified, including database passwords and cloud keys. The problem arises when users select 'Yes, and don't ask again' while executing commands, causing the assistant to save the command verbatim, including any secrets. The file is not marked as private, leading to its inclusion in commits. Apiiro's findings indicate that 63 organizations, primarily software companies, are impacted, with one organization confirming that its key was live. The researchers recommend rotating all exposed secrets and cleaning up the repositories, as older versions of the file remain in git history. As of November 7, 2026, the secrets are still present in the repositories. 7 sources 56

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Coding Agents Copy Your Secrets to a Hidden File. Thousands Are on GitHub

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Extracted Entities

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Companies (1)

CWE Weaknesses (1)

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