gitleaks

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:29:28 +0800

gitleaks/gitleaks

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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    ○ ░
    ░    gitleaks


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

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

Install pre-commit from https://pre-commit.com/#install
Create a .pre-commit-config.yaml file at the root of your repository with the following content:
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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
Auto-update the config to the latest repos’ versions by executing pre-commit autoupdate
Install with pre-commit install
Now you’re all set!

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➜ 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

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

Usage

Usage:
  gitleaks [command]

Available Commands:
  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 (comma-separated list: cpu,mem,trace). cpu=CPU profiling, mem=memory profiling, trace=execution tracing
      --diagnostics-dir string        directory to store diagnostics output files (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-decode-depth int          allow recursive decoding up to this depth (default "0", no decoding is done)
      --max-archive-depth int         allow scanning into nested archives up to this depth (default "0", no archive traversal 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)
  -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.

`1`	`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:

`1`	`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:

--config/-c option:

`1`	`gitleaks git --config /home/dev/customgitleaks.toml .`

Environment variable GITLEAKS_CONFIG with the file path:

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export GITLEAKS_CONFIG="/home/dev/customgitleaks.toml"
gitleaks git .

Environment variable GITLEAKS_CONFIG_TOML with the file content:

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export GITLEAKS_CONFIG_TOML=`cat customgitleaks.toml`
gitleaks git .

A .gitleaks.toml file within the target path:
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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:

# 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",
]

# Array of strings used for metadata and reporting purposes.
tags = ["tag","another tag"]

    # ⚠️ In v8.21.0 `[rules.allowlist]` was replaced with `[[rules.allowlists]]`.
    # This change was backwards-compatible: instances of `[rules.allowlist]` still  work.
    #
    # You can define multiple allowlists for a rule to reduce false positives.
    # A finding will be ignored if _ANY_ `[[rules.allowlists]]` matches.
    [[rules.allowlists]]
    description = "ignore commit A"
    # When multiple criteria are defined the default condition is "OR".
    # e.g., this can match on |commits| OR |paths| OR |stopwords|.
    condition = "OR"
    commits = [ "commit-A", "commit-B"]
    paths = [
      '''go\.mod''',
      '''go\.sum'''
    ]
    # note: stopwords targets the extracted secret, not the entire regex match
    # like 'regexes' does. (stopwords introduced in 8.8.0)
    stopwords = [
      '''client''',
      '''endpoint''',
    ]

    [[rules.allowlists]]
    # The "AND" condition can be used to make sure all criteria match.
    # e.g., this matches if |regexes| AND |paths| are satisfied.
    condition = "AND"
    # note: |regexes| defaults to check the _Secret_ in the finding.
    # Acceptable values for |regexTarget| are "secret" (default), "match", and "line".
    regexTarget = "match"
    regexes = [ '''(?i)parseur[il]''' ]
    paths = [ '''package-lock\.json''' ]

# You can extend a particular rule from the default config. e.g., gitlab-pat
# if you have defined a custom token prefix on your GitLab instance
[[rules]]
id = "gitlab-pat"
# all the other attributes from the default rule are inherited

    [[rules.allowlists]]
    regexTarget = "line"
    regexes = [ '''MY-glpat-''' ]


# ⚠️ In v8.25.0 `[allowlist]` was replaced with `[[allowlists]]`.
#
# Global allowlists have a higher order of precedence than rule-specific allowlists.
# If a commit listed in the `commits` field below is encountered then that commit will be skipped and no
# secrets will be detected for said commit. The same logic applies for regexes and paths.
[[allowlists]]
description = "global allow list"
commits = [ "commit-A", "commit-B", "commit-C"]
paths = [
  '''gitleaks\.toml''',
  '''(.*?)(jpg|gif|doc)'''
]
# note: (global) regexTarget defaults to check the _Secret_ in the finding.
# Acceptable values for regexTarget are "match" and "line"
regexTarget = "match"
regexes = [
  '''219-09-9999''',
  '''078-05-1120''',
  '''(9[0-9]{2}|666)-\d{2}-\d{4}''',
]
# note: stopwords targets the extracted secret, not the entire regex match
# like 'regexes' does. (stopwords introduced in 8.8.0)
stopwords = [
  '''client''',
  '''endpoint''',
]

# ⚠️ In v8.25.0, `[[allowlists]]` have a new field called |targetRules|.
#
# Common allowlists can be defined once and assigned to multiple rules using |targetRules|.
# This will only run on the specified rules, not globally.
[[allowlists]]
targetRules = ["awesome-rule-1", "awesome-rule-2"]
description = "Our test assets trigger false-positives in a couple rules."
paths = ['''tests/expected/._\.json$''']

Refer to the default gitleaks config for examples or follow the contributing guidelines if you would like to contribute to the default configuration. Additionally, you can check out this gitleaks blog post which covers advanced configuration setups.

Additional Configuration

gitleaks:allow

If you are knowingly committing a test secret that gitleaks will catch you can add a gitleaks:allow comment to that line which will instruct gitleaks to ignore that secret. Ex:

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class CustomClass:
    discord_client_secret = '8dyfuiRyq=vVc3RRr_edRk-fK__JItpZ'  #gitleaks:allow

.gitleaksignore

You can ignore specific findings by creating a .gitleaksignore file at the root of your repo. In release v8.10.0 Gitleaks added a Fingerprint value to the Gitleaks report. Each leak, or finding, has a Fingerprint that uniquely identifies a secret. Add this fingerprint to the .gitleaksignore file to ignore that specific secret. See Gitleaks’ .gitleaksignore for an example. Note: this feature is experimental and is subject to change in the future.

Decoding

Sometimes secrets are encoded in a way that can make them difficult to find with just regex. Now you can tell gitleaks to automatically find and decode encoded text. The flag --max-decode-depth enables this feature (the default value “0” means the feature is disabled by default).

Recursive decoding is supported since decoded text can also contain encoded text. The flag --max-decode-depth sets the recursion limit. Recursion stops when there are no new segments of encoded text to decode, so setting a really high max depth doesn’t mean it will make that many passes. It will only make as many as it needs to decode the text. Overall, decoding only minimally increases scan times.

The findings for encoded text differ from normal findings in the following ways:

The location points the bounds of the encoded text
- If the rule matches outside the encoded text, the bounds are adjusted to include that as well
The match and secret contain the decoded value
Two tags are added decoded:<encoding> and decode-depth:<depth>

Currently supported encodings:

percent - Any printable ASCII percent encoded values
hex - Any printable ASCII hex encoded values >= 32 characters
base64 - Any printable ASCII base64 encoded values >= 16 characters

Archive Scanning

Sometimes secrets are packaged within archive files like zip files or tarballs, making them difficult to discover. Now you can tell gitleaks to automatically extract and scan the contents of archives. The flag --max-archive-depth enables this feature for both dir and git scan types. The default value of “0” means this feature is disabled by default.

Recursive scanning is supported since archives can also contain other archives. The --max-archive-depth flag sets the recursion limit. Recursion stops when there are no new archives to extract, so setting a very high max depth just sets the potential to go that deep. It will only go as deep as it needs to.

The findings for secrets located within an archive will include the path to the file inside the archive. Inner paths are separated with !.

Example finding (shortened for brevity):

Finding:     DB_PASSWORD=8ae31cacf141669ddfb5da
...
File:        testdata/archives/nested.tar.gz!archives/files.tar!files/.env.prod
Line:        4
Commit:      6e6ee6596d337bb656496425fb98644eb62b4a82
...
Fingerprint: 6e6ee6596d337bb656496425fb98644eb62b4a82:testdata/archives/nested.tar.gz!archives/files.tar!files/.env.prod:generic-api-key:4
Link:        https://github.com/leaktk/gitleaks/blob/6e6ee6596d337bb656496425fb98644eb62b4a82/testdata/archives/nested.tar.gz

This means a secret was detected on line 4 of files/.env.prod. which is in archives/files.tar which is in testdata/archives/nested.tar.gz.

Currently supported formats:

The compression and archive formats supported by mholt’s archives package are supported.

Reporting

Gitleaks has built-in support for several report formats: json, csv, junit, and sarif.

If none of these formats fit your need, you can create your own report format with a Go text/template .tmpl file and the --report-template flag. The template can use extended functionality from the Masterminds/sprig template library.

For example, the following template provides a custom JSON output:

# jsonextra.tmpl
[{{ $lastFinding := (sub (len . ) 1) }}
{{- range $i, $finding := . }}{{with $finding}}
    {
        "Description": {{ quote .Description }},
        "StartLine": {{ .StartLine }},
        "EndLine": {{ .EndLine }},
        "StartColumn": {{ .StartColumn }},
        "EndColumn": {{ .EndColumn }},
        "Line": {{ quote .Line }},
        "Match": {{ quote .Match }},
        "Secret": {{ quote .Secret }},
        "File": "{{ .File }}",
        "SymlinkFile": {{ quote .SymlinkFile }},
        "Commit": {{ quote .Commit }},
        "Entropy": {{ .Entropy }},
        "Author": {{ quote .Author }},
        "Email": {{ quote .Email }},
        "Date": {{ quote .Date }},
        "Message": {{ quote .Message }},
        "Tags": [{{ $lastTag := (sub (len .Tags ) 1) }}{{ range $j, $tag := .Tags }}{{ quote . }}{{ if ne $j $lastTag }},{{ end }}{{ end }}],
        "RuleID": {{ quote .RuleID }},
        "Fingerprint": {{ quote .Fingerprint }}
    }{{ if ne $i $lastFinding }},{{ end }}
{{- end}}{{ end }}
]

Usage:

`1`	`$ gitleaks dir ~/leaky-repo/ --report-path "report.json" --report-format template --report-template testdata/report/jsonextra.tmpl`

Sponsorships

coderabbit.ai

Exit Codes

You can always set the exit code when leaks are encountered with the –exit-code flag. Default exit codes below:

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3

0 - no leaks present
1 - leaks or error encountered
126 - unknown flag

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