Hardcoded Credentials: Why They Occur and How to Fix
How credentials end up hardcoded in source code, how attackers find them, and the process to rotate and replace them safely.
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Tags: security, best-practices, mistakes
Hardcoded Credentials: The Security Mistake That Ends Careers Hardcoded credentials are passwords, API keys, database connection strings, private keys, and other secrets that are embedded directly in source code. They appear in production systems with alarming frequency — and they are catastrophic when the code is exposed. A GitHub repository set to public for 30 minutes, a Pastebin snippet, a leaked build artifact — any of these expose credentials that may be valid for years. Why It Happens The path to hardcoded credentials usually looks like one of these: "It's just for local dev" — developers add test credentials that survive to production Configuration complexity — environment variable setup is tedious; hardcoding is faster Not realizing it's a secret — internal API keys treated…
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