In stunning display of stupid, secret CISA credentials found in public GitHub repo
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Critical security breach with plaintext creds – highly actionable
CISA contractor Nightwing leaked plaintext passwords, SSH keys, and tokens in a public GitHub repo named 'Private-CISA' since November 2025, with GitHub's default secret scanning protections deliberately disabled by the repo admin. Security researchers Krebs and GitGuardian's Valadon uncovered the exposure, and Seralys founder Caturegli confirmed he could use the credentials to access AWS GovCloud accounts at high privilege. This follows CISA's earlier ChatGPT incident this year, highlighting systemic failures in credential management and default security controls.
Lee Hutchinson — Lee is the Senior Technology Editor, and has been with Ars Technica since 2012. He oversees story development for the gadget, culture, IT, AI, and video sections of Ars Technica—and, when he's able, writes the occasional story in one of those...