GitHub - trufflesecurity/trufflehog: Find, verify, and analyze leaked credentials By dipto-truffle Archived: 2026-04-05 18:58:51 UTC Find leaked credentials. ggoo rreeppoorrtt A + lliicceennssee AAGGPPLL--33..00 TToottaall DDeetteeccttoorrss 866 ๐Ÿ”Ž Now Scanning ...and more To learn more about TruffleHog and its features and capabilities, visit our product page. https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 1 of 20 ๐ŸŒ TruffleHog Enterprise Are you interested in continuously monitoring Git, Jira, Slack, Confluence, Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint (and more) for credentials? We have an enterprise product that can help! Learn more at https://trufflesecurity.com/trufflehog-enterprise. We take the revenue from the enterprise product to fund more awesome open source projects that the whole community can benefit from. What is TruffleHog ๐Ÿฝ TruffleHog is the most powerful secrets Discovery, Classification, Validation, and Analysis tool. In this context, secret refers to a credential a machine uses to authenticate itself to another machine. This includes API keys, database passwords, private encryption keys, and more. Discovery ๐Ÿ” TruffleHog can look for secrets in many places including Git, chats, wikis, logs, API testing platforms, object stores, filesystems and more. Classification ๐Ÿ“ TruffleHog classifies over 800 secret types, mapping them back to the specific identity they belong to. Is it an AWS secret? Stripe secret? Cloudflare secret? Postgres password? SSL Private key? Sometimes it's hard to tell looking at it, so TruffleHog classifies everything it finds. Validation โœ… For every secret TruffleHog can classify, it can also log in to confirm if that secret is live or not. This step is critical to know if thereโ€™s an active present danger or not. Analysis ๐Ÿ”ฌ For the 20 some of the most commonly leaked out credential types, instead of sending one request to check if the secret can log in, TruffleHog can send many requests to learn everything there is to know about the secret. Who created it? What resources can it access? What permissions does it have on those resources? ๐Ÿ“ข Join Our Community Have questions? Feedback? Jump into Slack or Discord and hang out with us. Join our Slack Community Join the Secret Scanning Discord ๐Ÿ“บ Demo https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 2 of 20 docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/pwd" trufflesecurity/trufflehog:latest github --org=trufflesecurity ๐Ÿ’พ Installation Several options are available for you: MacOS users Docker: Ensure Docker engine is running before executing the following commands: ย ย ย ย Unix docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/pwd" trufflesecurity/trufflehog:latest github --repo https://github.com ย ย ย ย Windows Command Prompt docker run --rm -it -v "%cd:/=\%:/pwd" trufflesecurity/trufflehog:latest github --repo https://github ย ย ย ย Windows PowerShell docker run --rm -it -v "${PWD}:/pwd" trufflesecurity/trufflehog github --repo https://github.com/truf https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 3 of 20 M1 and M2 Mac docker run --platform linux/arm64 --rm -it -v "$PWD:/pwd" trufflesecurity/trufflehog:latest github -- Binary releases Download and unpack from https://github.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog/releases Compile from source git clone https://github.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog.git cd trufflehog; go install Using installation script curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog/main/scripts/install.sh | sh Using installation script, verify checksum signature (requires cosign to be installed) curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog/main/scripts/install.sh | sh Using installation script to install a specific version curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog/main/scripts/install.sh | sh ๐Ÿ” Verifying the artifacts Checksums are applied to all artifacts, and the resulting checksum file is signed using cosign. You need the following tool to verify signature: Cosign Verification steps are as follows: 1. Download the artifact files you want, and the following files from the releases page. trufflehog_{version}_checksums.txt trufflehog_{version}_checksums.txt.pem trufflehog_{version}_checksums.txt.sig 2. Verify the signature: https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 4 of 20 cosign verify-blob \ --certificate \ --signature \ --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github\.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog/\.github/workflo --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com" 3. Once the signature is confirmed as valid, you can proceed to validate that the SHA256 sums align with the downloaded artifact: sha256sum --ignore-missing -c trufflehog_{version}_checksums.txt Replace {version} with the downloaded files version Alternatively, if you are using the installation script, pass -v option to perform signature verification. This requires Cosign binary to be installed prior to running the installation script. ๐Ÿš€ Quick Start 1: Scan a repo for only verified secrets Command: trufflehog git https://github.com/trufflesecurity/test_keys --results=verified Expected output: ๐Ÿท๐Ÿ”‘๐Ÿท TruffleHog. Unearth your secrets. ๐Ÿท๐Ÿ”‘๐Ÿท Found verified result ๐Ÿท๐Ÿ”‘ Detector Type: AWS Decoder Type: PLAIN Raw result: AKIAYVP4CIPPERUVIFXG Line: 4 Commit: fbc14303ffbf8fb1c2c1914e8dda7d0121633aca File: keys Email: counter Repository: https://github.com/trufflesecurity/test_keys Timestamp: 2022-06-16 10:17:40 -0700 PDT ... 2: Scan a GitHub Org for only verified secrets https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 5 of 20 trufflehog github --org=trufflesecurity --results=verified 3: Scan a GitHub Repo for only verified secrets and get JSON output Command: trufflehog git https://github.com/trufflesecurity/test_keys --results=verified --json Expected output: {"SourceMetadata":{"Data":{"Git":{"commit":"fbc14303ffbf8fb1c2c1914e8dda7d0121633aca","file":"keys","email":"co ... 4: Scan a GitHub Repo + its Issues and Pull Requests trufflehog github --repo=https://github.com/trufflesecurity/test_keys --issue-comments --pr-comments 5: Scan an S3 bucket for high-confidence results (verified + unknown) trufflehog s3 --bucket= --results=verified,unknown 6: Scan S3 buckets using IAM Roles trufflehog s3 --role-arn= 7: Scan a Github Repo using SSH authentication in Docker docker run --rm -v "$HOME/.ssh:/root/.ssh:ro" trufflesecurity/trufflehog:latest git ssh://github.com/ 8: Scan individual files or directories trufflehog filesystem path/to/file1.txt path/to/file2.txt path/to/dir 9: Scan a local git repo Clone the git repo. For example test keys repo. git clone git@github.com:trufflesecurity/test_keys.git https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 6 of 20 Run trufflehog from the parent directory (outside the git repo). trufflehog git file://test_keys --results=verified,unknown To guard against malicious git configs in local scanning (see CVE-2025-41390), TruffleHog clones local git repositories to a temporary directory prior to scanning. This follows Git's security best practices. If you want to specify a custom path to clone the repository to (instead of tmp), you can use the --clone-path flag. If you'd like to skip the local cloning process and scan the repository directly (only do this for trusted repos), you can use the - -trust-local-git-config flag. 10: Scan GCS buckets for only verified secrets trufflehog gcs --project-id= --cloud-environment --results=verified 11: Scan a Docker image for only verified secrets Use the --image flag multiple times to scan multiple images. # to scan from a remote registry trufflehog docker --image trufflesecurity/secrets --results=verified # to scan from the local docker daemon trufflehog docker --image docker://new_image:tag --results=verified # to scan from an image saved as a tarball trufflehog docker --image file://path_to_image.tar --results=verified 12: Scan in CI Set the --since-commit flag to your default branch that people merge into (ex: "main"). Set the --branch flag to your PR's branch name (ex: "feature-1"). Depending on the CI/CD platform you use, this value can be pulled in dynamically (ex: CIRCLE_BRANCH in Circle CI and TRAVIS_PULL_REQUEST_BRANCH in Travis CI). If the repo is cloned and the target branch is already checked out during the CI/CD workflow, then --branch HEAD should be sufficient. The --fail flag will return an 183 error code if valid credentials are found. trufflehog git file://. --since-commit main --branch feature-1 --results=verified,unknown --fail 13: Scan a Postman workspace Use the --workspace-id , --collection-id , --environment flags multiple times to scan multiple targets. https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 7 of 20 trufflehog postman --token= --workspace-id= 14: Scan a Jenkins server trufflehog jenkins --url https://jenkins.example.com --username admin --password admin 15: Scan an Elasticsearch server Scan a Local Cluster There are two ways to authenticate to a local cluster with TruffleHog: (1) username and password, (2) service token. Connect to a local cluster with username and password trufflehog elasticsearch --nodes 192.168.14.3 192.168.14.4 --username truffle --password hog Connect to a local cluster with a service token trufflehog elasticsearch --nodes 192.168.14.3 192.168.14.4 --service-token โ€˜AAEWVaWM...Rva2VuaSDZโ€™ Scan an Elastic Cloud Cluster To scan a cluster on Elastic Cloud, youโ€™ll need a Cloud ID and API key. trufflehog elasticsearch \ --cloud-id 'search-prod:dXMtY2Vx...YjM1ODNlOWFiZGRlNjI0NA==' \ --api-key 'MlVtVjBZ...ZSYlduYnF1djh3NG5FQQ==' 16. Scan a GitHub Repository for Cross Fork Object References and Deleted Commits The following command will enumerate deleted and hidden commits on a GitHub repository and then scan them for secrets. This is an alpha release feature. trufflehog github-experimental --repo https://github.com//.git --object-discovery In addition to the normal TruffleHog output, the --object-discovery flag creates two files in a new $HOME/.trufflehog directory: valid_hidden.txt and invalid.txt . These are used to track state during commit enumeration, as well as to provide users with a complete list of all hidden and deleted commits https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 8 of 20 ( valid_hidden.txt ). If you'd like to automatically remove these files after scanning, please add the flag -- delete-cached-data . Note: Enumerating all valid commits on a repository using this method takes between 20 minutes and a few hours, depending on the size of your repository. We added a progress bar to keep you updated on how long the enumeration will take. The actual secret scanning runs extremely fast. For more information on Cross Fork Object References, please read our blog post. 17. Scan Hugging Face Scan a Hugging Face Model, Dataset or Space trufflehog huggingface --model --space --dataset Scan all Models, Datasets and Spaces belonging to a Hugging Face Organization or User trufflehog huggingface --org --user (Optionally) When scanning an organization or user, you can skip an entire class of resources with --skip-models , --skip-datasets , --skip-spaces OR a particular resource with --ignore-models , -- ignore-datasets , --ignore-spaces . Scan Discussion and PR Comments trufflehog huggingface --model --include-discussions --include-prs 18. Scan stdin Input aws s3 cp s3://example/gzipped/data.gz - | gunzip -c | trufflehog stdin โ“ FAQ All I see is ๐Ÿท๐Ÿ”‘๐Ÿท TruffleHog. Unearth your secrets. ๐Ÿท๐Ÿ”‘๐Ÿท and the program exits, what gives? That means no secrets were detected Why is the scan taking a long time when I scan a GitHub org Unauthenticated GitHub scans have rate limits. To improve your rate limits, include the --token flag with a personal access token It says a private key was verified, what does that mean? A verified result means TruffleHog confirmed the credential is valid by testing it against the service's API. For private keys, we've confirmed the key can be used live for SSH or SSL authentication. Check out our Driftwood blog post to learn more Blog post https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 9 of 20 Is there an easy way to ignore specific secrets? If the scanned source supports line numbers, then you can add a trufflehog:ignore comment on the line containing the secret to ignore that secrets. ๐Ÿ“ฐ What's new in v3? TruffleHog v3 is a complete rewrite in Go with many new powerful features. We've added over 700 credential detectors that support active verification against their respective APIs. We've also added native support for scanning GitHub, GitLab, Docker, filesystems, S3, GCS, Circle CI and Travis CI. Instantly verify private keys against millions of github users and billions of TLS certificates using our Driftwood technology. Scan binaries, documents, and other file formats Available as a GitHub Action and a pre-commit hook What is credential verification? For every potential credential that is detected, we've painstakingly implemented programmatic verification against the API that we think it belongs to. Verification eliminates false positives and provides three result statuses: verified: Credential confirmed as valid and active by API testing unverified: Credential detected but not confirmed valid (may be invalid, expired, or verification disabled) unknown: Verification attempted but failed due to errors, such as a network or API failure For example, the AWS credential detector performs a GetCallerIdentity API call against the AWS API to verify if an AWS credential is active. ๐Ÿ“ Usage TruffleHog has a sub-command for each source of data that you may want to scan: git github gitlab docker s3 filesystem (files and directories) syslog circleci travisci gcs (Google Cloud Storage) postman jenkins https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 10 of 20 elasticsearch stdin multi-scan Each subcommand can have options that you can see with the --help flag provided to the sub command: $ trufflehog git --help usage: TruffleHog [] [ ...] TruffleHog is a tool for finding credentials. Flags: -h, --[no-]help Show context-sensitive help (also try --help-long and --help-man). --log-level=0 Logging verbosity on a scale of 0 (info) to 5 (trace). Can be disabled with "-1". --[no-]profile Enables profiling and sets a pprof and fgprof server on :18066. -j, --[no-]json Output in JSON format. --[no-]json-legacy Use the pre-v3.0 JSON format. Only works with git, gitlab, and github sources. --[no-]github-actions Output in GitHub Actions format. --concurrency=12 Number of concurrent workers. --[no-]no-verification Don't verify the results. --results=RESULTS Specifies which type(s) of results to output: verified (confirmed valid by API), unknown (verification failed due to error), unverified (detected but not verified), filtered_unverified (unverified but would have been filtered out). Defaults to verified,unverified,unknown. --[no-]no-color Disable colorized output --[no-]allow-verification-overlap Allow verification of similar credentials across detectors --[no-]filter-unverified Only output first unverified result per chunk per detector if there are more than one results. --filter-entropy=FILTER-ENTROPY Filter unverified results with Shannon entropy. Start with 3.0. --config=CONFIG Path to configuration file. --[no-]print-avg-detector-time Print the average time spent on each detector. --[no-]no-update Don't check for updates. --[no-]fail Exit with code 183 if results are found. --[no-]fail-on-scan-errors Exit with non-zero error code if an error occurs during the scan. --verifier=VERIFIER ... Set custom verification endpoints. --[no-]custom-verifiers-only Only use custom verification endpoints. --detector-timeout=DETECTOR-TIMEOUT Maximum time to spend scanning chunks per detector (e.g., 30s). https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 11 of 20 --archive-max-size=ARCHIVE-MAX-SIZE Maximum size of archive to scan. (Byte units eg. 512B, 2KB, 4MB) --archive-max-depth=ARCHIVE-MAX-DEPTH Maximum depth of archive to scan. --archive-timeout=ARCHIVE-TIMEOUT Maximum time to spend extracting an archive. --include-detectors="all" Comma separated list of detector types to include. Protobuf name or IDs may be used, as well as ranges. --exclude-detectors=EXCLUDE-DETECTORS Comma separated list of detector types to exclude. Protobuf name or IDs may be used, as well as ranges. IDs defined here take precedence over the include list. --[no-]no-verification-cache Disable verification caching --[no-]force-skip-binaries Force skipping binaries. --[no-]force-skip-archives Force skipping archives. --[no-]skip-additional-refs Skip additional references. --user-agent-suffix=USER-AGENT-SUFFIX Suffix to add to User-Agent. --[no-]version Show application version. Commands: help [...] Show help. git [] Find credentials in git repositories. github [] Find credentials in GitHub repositories. github-experimental --repo=REPO [] Run an experimental GitHub scan. Must specify at least one experimental sub-module to run: object-discovery. gitlab --token=TOKEN [] Find credentials in GitLab repositories. filesystem [] [...] Find credentials in a filesystem. s3 [] Find credentials in S3 buckets. https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 12 of 20 gcs [] Find credentials in GCS buckets. syslog --format=FORMAT [] Scan syslog circleci --token=TOKEN Scan CircleCI docker [] Scan Docker Image travisci --token=TOKEN Scan TravisCI postman [] Scan Postman elasticsearch [] Scan Elasticsearch jenkins --url=URL [] Scan Jenkins huggingface [] Find credentials in HuggingFace datasets, models and spaces. stdin Find credentials from stdin. multi-scan Find credentials in multiple sources defined in configuration. json-enumerator [...] Find credentials from a JSON enumerator input. analyze Analyze API keys for fine-grained permissions information. For example, to scan a git repository, start with trufflehog git https://github.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog.git Configuration https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 13 of 20 TruffleHog supports defining custom regex detectors and multiple sources in a configuration file provided via the --config flag. The regex detectors can be used with any subcommand, while the sources defined in configuration are only for the multi-scan subcommand. The configuration format for sources can be found on Truffle Security's source configuration documentation page. Example GitHub source configuration and options reference: sources: - connection: '@type': type.googleapis.com/sources.GitHub repositories: - https://github.com/trufflesecurity/test_keys.git unauthenticated: {} name: example config scan type: SOURCE_TYPE_GITHUB verify: true You may define multiple connections under the sources key (see above), and TruffleHog will scan all of the sources concurrently. S3 The S3 source supports assuming IAM roles for scanning in addition to IAM users. This makes it easier for users to scan multiple AWS accounts without needing to rely on hardcoded credentials for each account. The IAM identity that TruffleHog uses initially will need to have AssumeRole privileges as a principal in the trust policy of each IAM role to assume. To scan a specific bucket using locally set credentials or instance metadata if on an EC2 instance: trufflehog s3 --bucket= To scan a specific bucket using an assumed role: trufflehog s3 --bucket= --role-arn= Multiple roles can be passed as separate arguments. The following command will attempt to scan every bucket each role has permissions to list in the S3 API: trufflehog s3 --role-arn= --role-arn= Exit Codes: https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 14 of 20 0: No errors and no results were found. 1: An error was encountered. Sources may not have completed scans. 183: No errors were encountered, but results were found. Will only be returned if --fail flag is used. TruffleHog Github Action General Usage on: push: branches: - main pull_request: jobs: test: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: Checkout code uses: actions/checkout@v4 with: fetch-depth: 0 - name: Secret Scanning uses: trufflesecurity/trufflehog@main with: extra_args: --results=verified,unknown In the example config above, we're scanning for live secrets in all PRs and Pushes to main . Only code changes in the referenced commits are scanned. If you'd like to scan an entire branch, please see the "Advanced Usage" section below. Shallow Cloning If you're incorporating TruffleHog into a standalone workflow and aren't running any other CI/CD tooling alongside TruffleHog, then we recommend using Shallow Cloning to speed up your workflow. Here's an example of how to do it: ... - shell: bash run: | if [ "${{ github.event_name }}" == "push" ]; then echo "depth=$(($(jq length <<< '${{ toJson(github.event.commits) }}') + 2))" >> $GITHUB_ENV echo "branch=${{ github.ref_name }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV fi if [ "${{ github.event_name }}" == "pull_request" ]; then https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 15 of 20 echo "depth=$((${{ github.event.pull_request.commits }}+2))" >> $GITHUB_ENV echo "branch=${{ github.event.pull_request.head.ref }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV fi - uses: actions/checkout@v3 with: ref: ${{env.branch}} fetch-depth: ${{env.depth}} - uses: trufflesecurity/trufflehog@main with: extra_args: --results=verified,unknown ... Depending on the event type (push or PR), we calculate the number of commits present. Then we add 2, so that we can reference a base commit before our code changes. We pass that integer value to the fetch-depth flag in the checkout action in addition to the relevant branch. Now our checkout process should be much shorter. Canary detection TruffleHog statically detects https://canarytokens.org/. Advanced Usage - name: TruffleHog uses: trufflesecurity/trufflehog@main with: # Repository path path: # Start scanning from here (usually main branch). base: # Scan commits until here (usually dev branch). head: # optional https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 16 of 20 # Extra args to be passed to the trufflehog cli. extra_args: --log-level=2 --results=verified,unknown If you'd like to specify specific base and head refs, you can use the base argument ( --since-commit flag in TruffleHog CLI) and the head argument ( --branch flag in the TruffleHog CLI). We only recommend using these arguments for very specific use cases, where the default behavior does not work. Advanced Usage: Scan entire branch - name: scan-push uses: trufflesecurity/trufflehog@main with: base: "" head: ${{ github.ref_name }} extra_args: --results=verified,unknown TruffleHog GitLab CI Example Usage stages: - security security-secrets: stage: security allow_failure: false image: alpine:latest variables: SCAN_PATH: "." # Set the relative path in the repo to scan before_script: - apk add --no-cache git curl jq - curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog/main/scripts/install.sh script: - trufflehog filesystem "$SCAN_PATH" --results=verified,unknown --fail --json | jq rules: - if: '$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"' In the example pipeline above, we're scanning for live secrets in all repository directories and files. This job runs only when the pipeline source is a merge request event, meaning it's triggered when a new merge request is created. Pre-commit Hook https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 17 of 20 TruffleHog can be used in a pre-commit hook to prevent credentials from leaking before they ever leave your computer. See the pre-commit hook documentation for more information. Custom Regex Detector (alpha) TruffleHog supports detection and verification of custom regular expressions. For detection, at least one regular expression and keyword is required. A keyword is a fixed literal string identifier that appears in or around the regex to be detected. To allow maximum flexibility for verification, a webhook is used containing the regular expression matches. TruffleHog will send a JSON POST request containing the regex matches to a configured webhook endpoint. If the endpoint responds with a 200 OK response status code, the secret is considered verified. If verification fails due to network/API errors, the result is marked as unknown. Custom Detectors support a few different filtering mechanisms: entropy, regex targeting the entire match, regex targeting the captured secret, and excluded word lists checked against the secret (captured group if present, entire match if capture group is not present). Note that if your custom detector has multiple regex set (in this example hogID , and hogToken ), then the filters get applied to each regex. Here is an example of a custom detector using these filters. NB: This feature is alpha and subject to change. Regex Detector Example Here is how to setup a custom regex detector with verification server. Generic JWT Detection TruffleHog supports detection and verification of a subset of generic JWTs it finds. Specifically, if a JWT uses public-key cryptography rather than HMAC and the public key can be obtained, TruffleHog can determine whether the JWT is live or not. ๐Ÿ” Analyze TruffleHog supports running a deeper analysis of a credential to view its permissions and the resources it has access to. โค๏ธ Contributors This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute]. https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 18 of 20 ๐Ÿ’ป Contributing Contributions are very welcome! Please see our contribution guidelines first. We no longer accept contributions to TruffleHog v2, but that code is available in the v2 branch. Adding new secret detectors We have published some documentation and tooling to get started on adding new secret detectors. Let's improve detection together! Use as a library Currently, trufflehog is in heavy development and no guarantees can be made on the stability of the public APIs at this time. License Change Since v3.0, TruffleHog is released under a AGPL 3 license, included in LICENSE . TruffleHog v3.0 uses none of the previous codebase, but care was taken to preserve backwards compatibility on the command line interface. https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 19 of 20 The work previous to this release is still available licensed under GPL 2.0 in the history of this repository and the previous package releases and tags. A completed CLA is required for us to accept contributions going forward. Source: https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog https://github.com/dxa4481/truffleHog Page 20 of 20