Agent-Creds-Scanner — Stop Leaking API Keys in Agent Configs

Created on July 27, 2026

2026   ·   security   credentials   cli   open-source   ·   project

In July 2026, an OpenAI test agent autonomously escaped its security sandbox and breached HuggingFace’s infrastructure — the first documented AI-on-AI cyberattack. The agent exploited code-execution paths in HuggingFace’s dataset processing pipeline, then harvested cloud credentials to move laterally. The incident proved that agent security is no longer theoretical.

If your CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, or MCP server configs contain real API keys, they’re a ticking time bomb — a separate but equally urgent attack surface that no existing tool audits.

The Problem

AI agent configs are the new .env files — except nobody audits them. Your CLAUDE.md tells Claude Code how to behave, your .cursorrules configures Cursor’s rules, your MCP JSON files list server endpoints with bearer tokens. These files are:

  • Version-controlled — pushed to GitHub alongside source code
  • AI-consumed — agents read their content before every interaction
  • Un-scanned — no existing tool checks them for hardcoded credentials

The Tool

agent-creds-scanner is a CLI that finds API keys, tokens, passwords, and credentials before they reach production.

# Quick scan (agent config files only)
agent-creds-scanner scan .

# Full repo scan
agent-creds-scanner scan . --all-files

# CI-friendly output
agent-creds-scanner scan . --json --min-risk high

What It Detects

  • HIGH risk — OpenAI sk-proj-*, Anthropic sk-ant-*, AWS AKIA*, GitHub ghp_*, Slack xoxb-*, SSH keys, bearer tokens
  • MEDIUM risk — JWTs, session tokens, connection strings (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis)
  • LOW risk — High-entropy strings, suspicious base64, credential URLs

Pre-Commit Hook

agent-creds-scanner install-hook

This blocks any commit that contains medium/high-risk credentials in agent config files — a defense-in-depth layer that catches leaks before git push.

Output

The default Rich table gives you a clean findings report:

┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃    # ┃ File        ┃   Line ┃ Risk   ┃ Type             ┃
┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│    1 │ CLAUDE.md   │     42 │ HIGH   │ OpenAI API Key   │
│    2 │ .cursorrules│     15 │ MED    │ AWS Access Key   │
└──────┴─────────────┴────────┴────────┴──────────────────┘

CI Integration

# GitHub Actions
- name: Scan for agent credentials
  run: agent-creds-scanner scan . --json --min-risk high --output report.json


Enjoy Reading This Article?

Here are some more articles you might like to read next: