When Help Turns Hazardous: AWS Keys and Developer Forums

A cry for help can become a gift for attackers.

Just one misplaced snippet. That’s all it takes to turn a harmless developer question into an open invitation for attackers — or curious strangers. While it’s rare for developers to knowingly include secrets in forum posts, accidents happen. A misstep in sharing code or an oversight in sanitizing a snippet can expose critical information. Our experiment wasn’t just about the frequency of such leaks; we sought to understand the ferocity with which attackers—and even well-meaning strangers—scan these platforms for opportunities, no matter how rare.

This is the fourth blog in our ongoing series, where we expose the limitations of traditional secret rotation and how attackers exploit leaked secrets. If you’re just joining us, we recommend starting with our Prelude, which outlines the motivations behind this research and provides a high-level summary of the risks involved.

So far, we’ve explored Code Hosting & Version Control Systems, Package Managers, and Code Sharing Platforms. In this installment, we focus on developer forums — platforms designed for community collaboration that can inadvertently become hotspots for accidental leaks.

Attackers in the Threads: The Dark Side of Developer Discussions

Scenarios

In the table below, we have listed all the scenarios we executed across various developer forums and communities to observe how quickly exploitation would occur and to gauge user responses upon seeing those secrets.

WebsiteScenario NameDescription
Secrets OverflowPosted a question on Stack Overflow including an AWS access key.
Quora QuandaryPosted questions on Quora, accidentally leaving an AWS access key exposed in formatted text.
Quora Quandary 2Posted questions on Quora with an AWS access key exposed in plain text.
Someone Obviously RedditPosted in various Reddit subreddits including an AWS access key in the posts.
Special Delivery!Opened a topic on the Postman Community forum including an AWS access key.

Results

Our experiment revealed that while developer forums like Stack Overflow, Quora, Reddit, and Postman Community are invaluable for collaboration, they are not immune to exploitation when secrets are accidentally leaked.

On Stack Overflow, a secret was exploited within a day, while a plain-text secret on Quora took five days to be compromised, likely by a human rather than automated scanners. Reddit saw exploitation within three days, and the fastest compromise occurred on Postman Community, where a secret was exploited in just ten hours.

Despite slightly longer exploitation times compared to repositories, the risks are no less severe, as these public platforms often fall outside enterprise monitoring, leaving good samaritans or moderators as the only defense.

PlatformScenarioTime to ExploitTime to Alert ⚠️
Secrets Overflow1 dayNo Alert Sent
Quora QuandaryNo exploitationNo Alert Sent
Quora Quandary 25 daysNo Alert Sent
Someone Obviously Reddit3 daysNo Alert Sent
Special Delivery!10 hoursNo Alert Sent

“Sir, I Think You Dropped Something”: The Scenarios We Tested

Stack Overflow Scenarios

Secrets Overflow

We intended to ask a question in Stack Overflow about why we were getting an 'access denied' error when trying to upload a file, but it seems we accidentally left our key in the post. Oops!

Exploited?Exploitation TimeAlert Time
Yes1 dayNo alert sent

We received no email from AWS about the key exposure, which makes sense. Within a single day, however, our key was exploited. Are attackers lurking on Stack Overflow, or were there curious users poking around? It’s hard to say. Several good samaritans urged us to quickly revoke the keys, and a moderator eventually deleted our post.

Quora Scenarios

Quora Quandary

We posted some questions to the Quora community, accidentally leaving our key exposed.

Exploited?Exploitation TimeAlert Time
No-No alert sent

We observed no hits on thiskey, suggesting that Quora may rarely be scanned. Why rarely? See the next scenario, where we observed something different.

Quora Quandary 2

We posted the same questions to the Quora community, but this time we left our key in plain text without any formatting.

Exploited?Exploitation TimeAlert Time
Yes5 daysNo alert sent

The fact that we observed a hit on this key only 5 days after publishing suggests the exploitation was potentially performed by a human or an infrequent scanner. Interestingly, while the formatted secrets scenario saw no hits,thisone did.

Reddit Scenarios

Someone Obviously Reddit

We posted a few times in various subreddits to see what would happen with our secrets on Reddit.

Exploited?Exploitation TimeAlert Time
Yes2 daysNo alert sent

Our secret was picked up within 3 days, and a kind stranger informed us that we shouldn’t do that. Lesson learned.

Postman Community Scenarios

Special Delivery!

We opened a topic on the Postman Community with an AWS access key, suspecting that some prying eyes might pick up our secret.

Exploited?Exploitation TimeAlert Time
Yes10 hoursNo alert sent

Within 10 hours, someone did. The topic remainsactive.

What’s Next

With Code Hosting & Version Control Platforms, Package Managers, Code Snippets & Sharing Platforms, and now - developer forums covered, our next post will explore a scenario inspired by the high-profile Internet Archive breach, where attackers exploited an exposed configuration file to access sensitive credentials. By mimicking this breach, we demonstrated firsthand that this incident wasn’t a one-off event. It serves as a warning to organizations everywhere: a single exposed token can cascade into far-reaching consequences.

If you can’t wait for the next blog post, we invite you to download the full report, with all scenarios we ran, a deeper dive into our methodologies, platform-specific insights, attacker behavior patterns, and the tool we built to neutralize exposed secrets instantly. It’s an essential read for any organization looking to secure its systems against the escalating risks of exposed secrets.