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Tell HN: Github has dozens of public s3 passwords

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Re: Tell HN: Github has dozens of public s3 passwords

#16
post #15

Rather than store passwords or sensitive config data in a file I'll usually try to store them in an environment variable. Heroku has a little guide on this: http://docs.heroku.com/config-vars

I use a similar strategy: http://trevorturk.com/2009/06/25/config-vars-and-heroku/

...this kind of thing doesn't have to be Heroku-specific, though.

Re: Tell HN: Github has dozens of public s3 passwords

#18
There is a "message" button on each github user page.

I just sent this to a few people (including someone who had forked one of my projects and added their S3 keys to a config file):

Noticed you have your Amazon S3 keys out in the open on github. You might want to remove those config files from your repository as described in the thread here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1574211

-Pete

Re: Tell HN: Github has dozens of public s3 passwords

#19
post #11

In case anyone else made this mistake, Github's help section has an article describing the steps needed to remove sensitive data from a git repo: http://help.github.com/removing-sensitive-data/

In this case rotating your S3 creds is probably the optimal solution.

Re: Tell HN: Github has dozens of public s3 passwords

#20

" What's the best way to warn these folks? What other credentials are lurking out there?" Sure, posting that on HN is a good way...

How about leaving them some README-NOW.txt file in their S3 bucket?

I rarely list the contents of my S3 buckets so I'd probably never notice this.

Send them a message on GitHub, perhaps?

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