GitHub’s recent SSH private key exposure is a wake-up call for all developers to stay vigilant about their security practices. Learn more about the risks and how to prevent similar incidents from happening again. #GitHub #cybersecurity #SSHkeyexposure

GitHub recently reported that its RSA SSH private key was briefly exposed in a public GitHub repository. The company explained that the key was only used to secure “Git operations over SSH using RSA” and no internal systems, customer data, or secure TLS connections were at risk. GitHub reacted immediately by changing the key.

This incident is further evidence that secrets sprawl is not only being driven by inexperienced developers or new teams but is affecting companies of all sizes. Leaked private SSH keys can lead to a “man-in-the-middle attack,” where the end user cannot tell the difference between the legitimate other party and the attacker. GitHub’s rotation of their private SSH key means workflow runs will fail if they are using actions/checkout with the ssh-key option. In such cases, developers will have to remove the old key or manually update their ~/.ssh/known_hosts file.

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