Press enter or click to view image in full size
Hey everyone 👋
I’m Vipul, the curious mind behind TheHackersLog — a blog where we explore the science (and art) of cybersecurity, ethical hacking, and digital discovery. Today I’ll take you behind the scenes 🕵️♂️ into one of the most fascinating areas of hacking: finding secrets that sit in plain sight on public websites. This is a practical, hands-on guide aimed at defenders, bug bounty hunters, and curious learners — written in a human, practical style with commands, tools, and image suggestions so you can reproduce (responsibly) or protect against these findings.
What do we mean by “secrets”? 🤔
Not sci-fi vaults — usually small but dangerous leaks such as:
- API keys
- Database connection strings / passwords
- Cloud storage tokens (S3 / GCS)
- Internal or admin URLs (staging, dev panels)
- Credentials accidentally committed to public code
Even one small secret can cascade into big compromises. The point of this post is to show how these secrets are commonly discovered — so you can better protect your projects.