Security News > 2021 > June > GitHub Starts Scanning for Exposed Package Registry Credentials
GitHub this week announced that it has started scanning code hosted on its platform for package registry credentials, including RubyGems and PyPI secrets.
The scanning is performed via GitHub secret scanning, a service meant to identify exposed secrets in pushes to repositories.
Secrets left exposed in the code could allow malicious actors to access developer accounts and make unwanted changes to code.
"Scanning for supply chain secrets is important because unlike with other secrets, where exposing the secret impacts only one account, an exposed supply chain secret can potentially impact millions of downstream software applications and their users," GitHub says.
GitHub secret scanning has started looking for RubyGems and PyPI secrets, but it also supports scanning for npm, NuGet, and Clojars secrets.
GitHub secret scanning automatically scans new commits to repositories and, if it identifies an exposed secret, it notifies the registry of the leak, for that secret to be revoked.