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SQ34109

Detected presence of embedded private keys.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
failhighmedium3secrets: fail
Reason: plaintext private keys found

About the issue​

Private keys are access credentials that use public key cryptography to authorize network protocol users. Private keys verify the identity of a client trying to access a server. These private keys are considered secrets, and as such should never be published. While it is typical for private keys to be found as standalone files, the detected ones have been found embedded within another software package component. This could indicate an attempt to hide private key presence.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Review the reported private keys and remove them from the software package if they were accidentally included.
  • If the keys were published unintentionally and the software has been made public, you should revoke the keys and file a security incident.

Incidence statistics​

ReversingLabs periodically collects and analyzes the contents of popular software package repositories for threat research purposes. Analysis results are used to calculate incidence statistics for issues (policy violations) that Spectra Assure can detect in software packages.

This section is updated when new data becomes available.

Total amount of packages analyzed

  • RubyGems: 183K
  • Nuget: 644K
  • PyPi: 628K
  • NPM: 3.72M

Total detections per repository

For every repository, the chart shows the number of packages that triggered the software assurance policy. In other words, it shows how many packages in each package repository were found to have the specific issue described on this page. This information helps you understand how common the issue is across different software communities.

If a repository is absent from the chart, that means none of the packages in that repository triggered this policy during analysis, or the policy was not used during analysis.

Distribution of total detections by project popularity

For every repository, the chart shows how many of the total detections belong to the Top 100 (1-100), Top 1000 (101-1000) and Top 10 000 (1001-10 000) most downloaded projects. This information helps you understand the impact of the issue within each community, making it clearer when the issue affects the most popular projects.

If the chart shows zero values for all of the top project groups, that means all detections were in unranked projects (lower than 10 000 on the list of most downloaded projects).