GitHub found 39M secret leaks in 2024. Here’s what we’re doing to help

If you know where to look, exposed secrets are easy to find. Secrets are supposed to prevent unauthorized access, but in the wrong hands, they can be—and typically are—exploited in seconds.

To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, more than 39 million secrets were leaked across GitHub in 2024 alone.¹ Every minute GitHub blocks several secrets with push protection.² Still, secret leaks remain one of the most common—and preventable—causes of security incidents. As we develop code faster than ever previously imaginable, we’re leaking secrets faster than ever, too.

That’s why, at GitHub, we’re working to prevent breaches caused by leaked tokens, credentials, and other secrets—ensuring protection against secret exposures is built-in and accessible to every developer...

The GitHub Blog