secret-scanning-response

name	secret-scanning-response
description	Respond to a detected secret leak (token in source, log, build artefact, or chat) with a fixed rotate-then-purge-then-trace sequence, never the other order.

Secret scanning response

When a secret leaks, the wrong order is: try to delete the commit first. The right order is: rotate, then purge, then trace.

When to run

• GitHub secret scanning alert.
• A scanner (gitleaks, trufflehog) finds a hit.
• A user reports a token in chat, logs, or screenshots.
• You catch it yourself before commit.

The fixed sequence

1. Rotate. Immediately invalidate the leaked credential at the issuer (Stripe key in Stripe dashboard, GitHub PAT under settings, AWS key under IAM, etc.). If you can't, escalate to a human with the issuer name.
2. Replace. Generate a new credential and update the live consumer (env var, secret manager, deploy pipeline). Confirm the consumer is healthy with production-validation gate 3.
3. Purge from source. Force-removal (git filter-repo or BFG) plus a forced rewrite of the affected branches. Coordinate with the team on coordinated re-clone.
4. Purge from artefacts. Build logs, screenshots in shared docs, screenshots in Slack threads, container layers, package registries.
5. Trace. Pull access logs (last 30 days or whatever the issuer retains). Look for use that did not originate from your own infra. Document.
6. Write up. File a planning issue with the timeline. If access logs show unauthorized use, treat it as an incident and run incident-postmortem-loop.

Never

• Rotate AFTER purge. The attacker still has the live key in the window.
• Delete the leaking commit before rotating. It's already on every clone.
• Skip the trace step. Even with no evidence of misuse, the log review is part of due diligence.

Tools

• Issuer dashboards (out of band) for rotate.
• agent_filesystem_search + git history tools for purge.
• pagerduty to page security on-call when the secret was production / customer-data scope.