【AI前沿】In stunning display of stupid, secret CISA credentials found in public GitHub repo

GitFlubIn stunning display of stupid, secret CISA credentials found in public GitHub repoSSH keys, plaintext passwords, other sensitive data had been up since November 2025.Lee Hutchinson–May 19, 2026 2:27 pm|82Only the best people.Credit:

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    settingsStory textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth*StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers onlyLearn moreMinimize to navSecurity researcher Brian Krebsbrings us the newsthat America’sCybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency(CISA) has had a large store of plaintext passwords, SSH private keys, tokens, and “other sensitive CISA assets” exposed in a public GitHub repo since at least November 2025.The now-offline public repo—named, somewhat aspirationally, “Private-CISA”—was brought to Krebs’ attention by GitGuardian’sGuillaume Valadon, who was alerted to the repo’s presence by GitGuardian’s public code scans. Krebs says that Valadon approached him after receiving no responses from the Private-CISA repo’s owner.In an email to Krebs, Valadon claimed that the repo’s commit logs show that GitHub’s default protections against committing secrets—protections designed to protect unwitting or unskilled developers against exactly this kind of stupidness—had been disabled by the repo’s administrator.Testing bySeralys founder Philippe Catureglishowed that this was not a joke or hoax and that he was able to use the credentials in the Private-CISA repo to gain access to multiple Amazon Web Services GovCloud accounts “at a high privilege level.”Krebs notes that the repo appeared to be managed by Virginia-basedNightwing, a CISA contractor. Nightwing has so far not commented publicly, instead referring questions back to CISA.This isn’t the first time CISA has screwed up—in fact, it’s not even the first timethis year. In January,polygraph-failingacting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkalauploaded sensitive government documents to ChatGPTafter demanding and receiving an exemption to the agency policy that prohibited ChatGPT’s use by CISA personnel. Gottumukkala wasremoved from his role in February.Lee HutchinsonSenior Technology EditorLee HutchinsonSenior Technology EditorLee is the Senior Technology Editor, and oversees story development for the gadget, culture, IT, and video sections of Ars Technica. A long-time member of the Ars OpenForum with an extensive background in enterprise storage and security, he lives in Houston.82 Comments