Pipeline secret detection

Pipeline secret detection scans files after they are committed to a Git repository and pushed to GitLab.

After you enable pipeline secret detection, scans run in a CI/CD job named secret_detection. You can run scans and view pipeline secret detection JSON report artifacts in any GitLab tier.

With GitLab Ultimate, pipeline secret detection results are also processed so you can:

• See them in the merge request widget, pipeline security report, and vulnerability report UIs.
• Use them in approval workflows.
• Review them in the security dashboard.
• Automatically respond to leaks in public repositories.
• Enforce consistent secret detection rules across projects using security policies.

For an interactive reading and how-to demo of this pipeline secret detection documentation see:

• How to enable secret detection in GitLab Application Security Part 1/2
• How to enable secret detection in GitLab Application Security Part 2/2

For other interactive reading and how-to demos, see the Get Started With GitLab Application Security Playlist.

Detected secrets

Pipeline secret detection scans the repository’s content for specific patterns. Each pattern matches a specific type of secret and is specified in a rule by using a TOML syntax. The default set of rules is maintained by GitLab. In the Ultimate tier, you can customize the default ruleset to suit your needs. For details, see Customize analyzer rulesets. To confirm which secrets are detected by pipeline secret detection, see Detected secrets. To provide reliable, high-confidence results, pipeline secret detection only looks for passwords or other unstructured secrets in specific contexts like URLs.

When a secret is detected a vulnerability is created for it. The vulnerability remains as “Still detected” even if the secret is removed from the scanned file and pipeline secret detection has been run again. This is because the secret remains in the Git repository’s history. To remove a secret from the Git repository’s history, see Redact text from repository.

Coverage

Pipeline secret detection scans different aspects of your code, depending on the situation. For all methods except “Default branch”, pipeline secret detection scans commits, not the working tree. For example, pipeline secret detection can detect if a secret was added in one commit and removed in a later commit.

• Historical scan

  If the SECRET_DETECTION_HISTORIC_SCAN variable is set, the content of all branches is scanned. Before scanning the repository’s content, pipeline secret detection runs the command git fetch --all to fetch the content of all branches.

• Commit range

  If the SECRET_DETECTION_LOG_OPTIONS variable is set, the secrets analyzer fetches the entire history of the branch or reference the pipeline is being run for. Pipeline secret detection then runs, scanning the commit range specified.

• Default branch

  When pipeline secret detection is run on the default branch, the Git repository is treated as a plain folder. Only the contents of the repository at the current HEAD are scanned. Commit history is not scanned.

• Push event

  On a push event, pipeline secret detection determines what commit range to scan, given the information available in the runner. To determine the commit range, the variables CI_COMMIT_SHA and CI_COMMIT_BEFORE_SHA are important.

  • CI_COMMIT_SHA is the commit at HEAD for a given branch. This variable is always set for push events.
  • CI_COMMIT_BEFORE_SHA is set in most cases. However, it is not set for the first push event on a new branch, nor for merge pipelines. Because of this, pipeline secret detection can’t be guaranteed when multiple commits are committed to a new branch.

• Merge request

  In a merge request, pipeline secret detection scans every commit made on the source branch. To use this feature, you must use the latest pipeline secret detection template, as it supports merge request pipelines. Pipeline secret detection’s results are only available after the pipeline is completed.

Full history pipeline secret detection

By default, pipeline secret detection scans only the current state of the Git repository. Any secrets contained in the repository’s history are not detected. To address this, pipeline secret detection can scan the Git repository’s full history.

You should do a full history scan only once, after enabling pipeline secret detection. A full history can take a long time, especially for larger repositories with lengthy Git histories. After completing an initial full history scan, use only standard pipeline secret detection as part of your pipeline.

Advanced vulnerability tracking

When developers make changes to a file with identified secrets, it’s likely that the positions of these secrets will also change. Pipeline secret detection may have already flagged these secrets as vulnerabilities, tracked in the vulnerability report. These vulnerabilities are associated with specific secrets for easy identification and action. However, if the detected secrets aren’t accurately tracked as they shift, managing vulnerabilities becomes challenging, potentially resulting in duplicate vulnerability reports.

Pipeline secret detection uses an advanced vulnerability tracking algorithm to more accurately identify when the same secret has moved within a file due to refactoring or unrelated changes.

For more information, see the confidential project https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/post-analyzers/tracking-calculator. The content of this project is available only to GitLab team members.

Unsupported workflows

• The algorithm does not support the workflow where the existing finding lacks a tracking signature and does not share the same location as the newly detected finding.
• For some rule types, such as cryptographic keys, pipeline secret detection identifies leaks by matching prefix of the secret rather than the entire secret value. In this scenario, the algorithm consolidates different secrets of the same rule type in a file into a single finding, rather than treating each distinct secret as a separate finding. For example, the SSH Private Key rule type matches only the -----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY----- prefix of a value to confirm the presence of a SSH private key. If there are two distinct SSH Private Keys within the same file, the algorithm considers both values as identical and reports only one finding instead of two.
• The algorithm’s scope is limited to a per-file basis, meaning that the same secret appearing in two different files is treated as two distinct findings.

Enable the analyzer

Enable the analyzer to use pipeline secret detection. After you enable it, you can customize the analyzer settings.

Prerequisites:

• Linux-based GitLab Runner with the docker or kubernetes executor. If you’re using hosted runners for GitLab.com, this is enabled by default.
  • Windows Runners are not supported.
  • CPU architectures other than amd64 are not supported.
• GitLab CI/CD configuration (.gitlab-ci.yml) must include the test stage.

To enable pipeline secret detection, either:

• Enable Auto DevOps, which includes Auto Secret Detection.
• Edit the .gitlab-ci.yml file manually. Use this method if your .gitlab-ci.yml file is complex.
• Use an automatically configured merge request.

Edit the .gitlab-ci.yml file manually

This method requires you to manually edit the existing .gitlab-ci.yml file. Use this method if your GitLab CI/CD configuration file is complex.

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.

2. Select Build > Pipeline editor.

3. Copy and paste the following to the bottom of the .gitlab-ci.yml file:

   include:
     - template: Jobs/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml

4. Select the Validate tab, then select Validate pipeline. The message Simulation completed successfully indicates the file is valid.

5. Select the Edit tab.

6. Optional. In the Commit message text box, customize the commit message.

7. In the Branch text box, enter the name of the default branch.

8. Select Commit changes.

Pipelines now include a pipeline secret detection job.

Use an automatically configured merge request

This method automatically prepares a merge request, with the pipeline secret detection template included in the .gitlab-ci.yml file. You then merge the merge request to enable pipeline secret detection.

To enable pipeline secret detection:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Secure > Security configuration.
3. In the Pipeline secret detection row, select Configure with a merge request.
4. Optional. Complete the fields.
5. Select Create merge request.
6. Review and merge the merge request.

Pipelines now include a pipeline secret detection job.

Output

Pipeline secret detection outputs the file gl-secret-detection-report.json as a job artifact. The file contains detected secrets. You can download the file for processing outside GitLab.

For more information, see:

• Report file schema
• Example report file

FIPS-enabled images

The default scanner images are built off a base Alpine image for size and maintainability. GitLab offers Red Hat UBI versions of the images that are FIPS-enabled.

To use the FIPS-enabled images, either:

• Set the SECRET_DETECTION_IMAGE_SUFFIX CI/CD variable to -fips.
• Add the -fips extension to the default image name.

For example:

variables:
  SECRET_DETECTION_IMAGE_SUFFIX: '-fips'

include:
  - template: Jobs/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml

Troubleshooting

Debug-level logging

Debug-level logging can help when troubleshooting. For details, see debug-level logging.

Warning: gl-secret-detection-report.json: no matching files

For information on this, see the general Application Security troubleshooting section.

Error: Couldn't run the gitleaks command: exit status 2

The pipeline secret detection analyzer relies on generating patches between commits to scan content for secrets. If the number of commits in a merge request is greater than the value of the GIT_DEPTH CI/CD variable, Secret Detection fails to detect secrets.

For example, you could have a pipeline triggered from a merge request containing 60 commits and the GIT_DEPTH variable set to less than 60. In that case the pipeline secret detection job fails because the clone is not deep enough to contain all of the relevant commits. To verify the current value, see pipeline configuration.

To confirm this as the cause of the error, enable debug-level logging, then rerun the pipeline. The logs should look similar to the following example. The text “object not found” is a symptom of this error.

ERRO[2020-11-18T18:05:52Z] object not found
[ERRO] [secrets] [2020-11-18T18:05:52Z] ▶ Couldn't run the gitleaks command: exit status 2
[ERRO] [secrets] [2020-11-18T18:05:52Z] ▶ Gitleaks analysis failed: exit status 2

To resolve the issue, set the GIT_DEPTH CI/CD variable to a higher value. To apply this only to the pipeline secret detection job, the following can be added to your .gitlab-ci.yml file:

secret_detection:
  variables:
    GIT_DEPTH: 100

Error: ERR fatal: ambiguous argument

Pipeline secret detection can fail with the message ERR fatal: ambiguous argument error if your repository’s default branch is unrelated to the branch the job was triggered for. See issue !352014 for more details.

To resolve the issue, make sure to correctly set your default branch on your repository. You should set it to a branch that has related history with the branch you run the secret-detection job on.

exec /bin/sh: exec format error message in job log

The GitLab pipeline secret detection analyzer only supports running on the amd64 CPU architecture. This message indicates that the job is being run on a different architecture, such as arm.

Error: fatal: detected dubious ownership in repository at '/builds/<project dir>'

Secret detection might fail with an exit status of 128. This can be caused by a change to the user on the Docker image.

For example:

$ /analyzer run
[INFO] [secrets] [2024-06-06T07:28:13Z] ▶ GitLab secrets analyzer v6.0.1
[INFO] [secrets] [2024-06-06T07:28:13Z] ▶ Detecting project
[INFO] [secrets] [2024-06-06T07:28:13Z] ▶ Analyzer will attempt to analyze all projects in the repository
[INFO] [secrets] [2024-06-06T07:28:13Z] ▶ Loading ruleset for /builds....
[WARN] [secrets] [2024-06-06T07:28:13Z] ▶ /builds/....secret-detection-ruleset.toml not found, ruleset support will be disabled.
[INFO] [secrets] [2024-06-06T07:28:13Z] ▶ Running analyzer
[FATA] [secrets] [2024-06-06T07:28:13Z] ▶ get commit count: exit status 128

To work around this issue, add a before_script with the following:

before_script:
    - git config --global --add safe.directory "$CI_PROJECT_DIR"

For more information about this issue, see issue 465974.

Warnings

Responding to a leaked secret

When a secret is detected, you should rotate it immediately. GitLab attempts to automatically revoke some types of leaked secrets. For those that are not automatically revoked, you must do so manually.

Purging a secret from the repository’s history does not fully address the leak. The original secret remains in any existing forks or clones of the repository.