When Automation Turns Against You: The Silent Leak of Secrets in Build Pipelines
During a security assessment for a crypto startup last month, I discovered a misconfigured GitHub Action that was silently leaking AWS credentials to the world. The pipeline was designed to deploy infrastructure, but a single misplaced line exposed secrets that attackers used to mine $800 in cryptocurrency. Here’s the detailed post-mortem of how CI/CD pipelines become accidental attack vectors.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
CI/CD systems are goldmines for attackers because:
- They handle production credentials
- They have access to critical infrastructure
- Misconfigurations are common — 68% of organizations leak secrets via pipelines (GitGuardian 2024)
The Silent Killer:
A single
echo ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}in a log can cost millions.