# Kingfisher

Kingfisher Logo [![License](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-Apache%202.0-blue.svg)](https://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0) Kingfisher is a blazingly fast secret‑scanning and validation tool built in Rust. It combines Intel’s hardware‑accelerated Hyperscan regex engine with language‑aware parsing via Tree‑Sitter, and **ships with hundreds of built‑in rules** to detect, validate, and triage secrets before they ever reach production

Kingfisher originated as a fork of [Nosey Parker](https://github.com/praetorian-inc/noseyparker) by Praetorian Security, Inc, and is built atop their incredible work and the work contributed by the Nosey Parker community. Kingfisher extends Nosey Parker by: 1. **Validating secrets** in real time via cloud-provider APIs 2. Enhancing regex-based detection with **source-code parsing** for improved accuracy 3. Adding **GitLab** repository scanning support 4. Adding support for scanning **Docker** images via `--docker-image` 5. Providing **Jira** scanning capabilities 6. Introducing a baseline feature that suppresses known secrets and reports only newly introduced ones 7. Offering native **Windows** support **MongoDB Blog**: [Introducing Kingfisher: Real-Time Secret Detection and Validation](https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/product-release-announcements/introducing-kingfisher-real-time-secret-detection-validation) ## Key Features - **Performance**: Multi‑threaded, Hyperscan‑powered scanning for massive codebases - **Language‑Aware Accuracy**: AST parsing in 20+ languages via Tree‑Sitter reduces contextless regex matches. see [docs/PARSING.md](/docs/PARSING.md) - **Built-In Validation**: Hundreds of built-in detection rules, many with live-credential validators that call the relevant service APIs (AWS, Azure, GCP, Stripe, etc.) to confirm a secret is active. You can extend or override the library by adding YAML-defined rules on the command line—see [docs/RULES.md](/docs/RULES.md) for details - **Git History Scanning**: Scan local repos, remote GitHub/GitLab orgs/users, or arbitrary GitHub/GitLab repos - **Jira Scanning**: Scan issues returned from a JQL search using `--jira-url` and `--jql` - **Docker Image Scanning**: Scan public or private docker images via `--docker-image` - **Baseline Support:** Generate and manage baseline files to ignore known secrets and report only newly introduced ones. See ([docs/BASELINE.md](docs/BASELINE.md)) for details. # Getting Started ## Installation On macOS, you can simply ```bash brew install kingfisher ``` Pre-built binaries are also available on the [Releases](https://github.com/mongodb/kingfisher/releases) section of this page. Or you may compile for your platform via `make`: ```bash # NOTE: Requires Docker make linux ``` ```bash # macOS make darwin ``` ```bash # Windows x64 --- requires building from a Windows host with Visual Studio installed ./buildwin.bat -force ``` ```bash # Build all targets make linux-all # builds both x64 and arm64 make darwin-all # builds both x64 and arm64 make all # builds for every OS and architecture supported ``` ### Run Kingfisher in Docker Run the dockerized Kingfisher container: ```bash # GitHub Container Registry docker run --rm ghcr.io/mongodb/kingfisher:latest --version # Scan the current working directory # (mounts your code at /src and scans it) docker run --rm \ -v "$PWD":/src \ ghcr.io/mongodb/kingfisher:latest scan /src # Scan while providing a GitHub token # Mounts your working dir at /proj and passes in the token: docker run --rm \ -e KF_GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_… \ -v "$PWD":/proj \ ghcr.io/mongodb/kingfisher:latest \ scan --git-url https://github.com/org/private_repo.git # Scan and write a JSON report locally # Here we: # 1. Mount $PWD → /proj # 2. Tell Kingfisher to write findings.json inside /proj/reports # 3. Ensure ./reports exists on your host so Docker can mount it mkdir -p reports # run and output into host’s ./reports directory docker run --rm \ -v "$PWD":/proj \ ghcr.io/mongodb/kingfisher:latest \ scan /proj \ --format json \ --output /proj/reports/findings.json # Tip: you can combine multiple mounts if you prefer separating source vs. output: # Here /src is read‑only, and /out holds your generated reports docker run --rm \ -v "$PWD":/src:ro \ -v "$PWD/reports":/out \ ghcr.io/mongodb/kingfisher:latest \ scan /src \ --format json \ --output /out/findings.json ``` # 🔐 Detection Rules at a Glance Kingfisher ships with hundreds of rules that cover everything from classic cloud keys to the latest LLM-API secrets. Below is an overview: | Category | What we catch | |----------|---------------| | **AI / LLM APIs** | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Cohere, Mistral, Stability AI, Replicate, xAI (Grok), and more | **Cloud Providers** | AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud, DigitalOcean, IBM Cloud, Cloudflare, and more | **Dev & CI/CD** | GitHub/GitLab tokens, CircleCI, TravisCI, TeamCity, Docker Hub, npm & PyPI publish token, and more | **Messaging & Comms** | Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Twilio, Mailgun/SendGrid/Mailchimp, and more | **Databases & Data Ops** | MongoDB Atlas, PlanetScale, Postgres DSNs, Grafana Cloud, Datadog, Dynatrace, and more | **Payments & Billing** | Stripe, PayPal, Square, GoCardless, and more | **Security & DevSecOps** | Snyk, Dependency-Track, CodeClimate, Codacy, OpsGenie, PagerDuty, and more | **Misc. SaaS & Tools** | 1Password, Adobe, Atlassian/Jira, Asana, Netlify, Baremetrics, and more ## Write Custom Rules! Kingfisher ships with hundreds of rules with HTTP and service‑specific validation checks (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) to confirm if a detected string is a live credential. However, you may want to add your own custom rules, or modify a detection to better suit your needs / environment. First, review [docs/RULES.md](/docs/RULES.md) to learn how to create custom Kingfisher rules. Once you've done that, you can provide your custom rules (defined in a YAML file) and provide it to Kingfisher at runtime --- no recompiling required! # Usage ## Basic Examples > **Note**  `kingfisher scan` detects whether the input is a Git repository or a plain directory—no extra flags required. ### Scan with secret validation ```bash kingfisher scan /path/to/code ## NOTE: This path can refer to: # 1. a local git repo # 2. a directory with many git repos # 3. or just a folder with files and subdirectories ## To explicitly prevent scanning git commit history add: # `--git-history=none` ``` ### Scan a directory containing multiple Git repositories ```bash kingfisher scan /projects/mono‑repo‑dir ``` ### Scan a Git repository without validation ```bash kingfisher scan ~/src/myrepo --no-validate ``` ### Display only secrets confirmed active by third‑party APIs ```bash kingfisher scan /path/to/repo --only-valid ``` ### Output JSON and capture to a file ```bash kingfisher scan . --format json | tee kingfisher.json ``` ### Output SARIF directly to disk ```bash kingfisher scan /path/to/repo --format sarif --output findings.sarif ``` ### Pipe any text directly into Kingfisher by passing `-` ```bash cat /path/to/file.py | kingfisher scan - ``` ### Scan using a rule _family_ with one flag _(prefix matching: `--rule kingfisher.aws` loads `kingfisher.aws._`)\* ```bash # Only apply AWS-related rules (kingfisher.aws.1 + kingfisher.aws.2) kingfisher scan /path/to/repo --rule kingfisher.aws ``` ### Display rule performance statistics ```bash kingfisher scan /path/to/repo --rule-stats ``` ### Scan while ignoring likely test files `--exclude` skips any file or directory whose path matches this glob pattern (repeatable, uses gitignore-style syntax, case sensitive) ```bash # Scan source but skip likely unit / integration tests kingfisher scan ./my-project \ --exclude='[Tt]est' \ --exclude='spec' \ --exclude='[Ff]ixture' \ --exclude='example' \ --exclude='sample' ``` ### Exclude specific paths ```bash # Skip all Python files and any directory named tests kingfisher scan ./my-project \ --exclude '*.py' \ --exclude '[Tt]ests' ``` If you want to know which files are being skipped, enable verbose debugging (-v) when scanning, which will report any files being skipped by the baseline file (or via --exclude): ```bash # Skip all Python files and any directory named tests, and report to stderr any skipped files kingfisher scan ./my-project \ --exclude '*.py' \ --exclude tests \ -v ``` ## Scanning Docker Images Kingfisher will first try to use any locally available image, then fall back to pulling via OCI. Authentication happens *in this order*: 1. **`KF_DOCKER_TOKEN`** env var - If it contains `user:pass`, it’s used as Basic auth - Otherwise it’s sent as a Bearer token 2. **Docker CLI credentials** - Checks `credHelpers` (per-registry) and `credsStore` in `~/.docker/config.json`. - Falls back to the legacy `auths` → `auth` (base64) entries. 3. **Anonymous** (no credentials) ```bash # 1) Scan public or already-pulled image kingfisher scan --docker-image ghcr.io/owasp/wrongsecrets/wrongsecrets-master:latest-master # 2) For private registries, explicitly set KF_DOCKER_TOKEN: # - Basic auth: "user:pass" # - Bearer only: "TOKEN" export KF_DOCKER_TOKEN="AWS:$(aws ecr get-login-password --region us-east-1)" kingfisher scan --docker-image some-private-registry.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/base/amazonlinux2023:latest # 3) Or rely on your Docker CLI login/keychain: # (e.g. aws ecr get-login-password … | docker login …) kingfisher scan --docker-image private.registry.example.com/my-image:tag ``` ## Scanning GitHub ### Scan GitHub organisation (requires `KF_GITHUB_TOKEN`) ```bash kingfisher scan --github-organization my-org ``` ### Scan remote GitHub repository ```bash kingfisher scan --git-url https://github.com/org/repo.git # Optionally provide a GitHub Token KF_GITHUB_TOKEN="ghp_…" kingfisher scan --git-url https://github.com/org/private_repo.git ``` --- ## Scanning GitLab ### Scan GitLab group (requires `KF_GITLAB_TOKEN`) ```bash kingfisher scan --gitlab-group my-group ``` ### Scan GitLab user ```bash kingfisher scan --gitlab-user johndoe ``` ### Scan remote GitLab repository by URL ```bash kingfisher scan --git-url https://gitlab.com/group/project.git ``` ### List GitLab repositories ```bash kingfisher gitlab repos list --group my-group ``` ## Scanning Jira ### Scan Jira issues matching a JQL query ```bash KF_JIRA_TOKEN="token" kingfisher scan \ --jira-url https://jira.company.com \ --jql "project = TEST AND status = Open" \ --max-results 500 ``` ### Scan the last 1,000 Jira issues: ```bash KF_JIRA_TOKEN="token" kingfisher scan \ --jira-url https://jira.mongodb.org \ --jql 'ORDER BY created DESC' \ --max-results 1000 ``` --- ## Environment Variables for Tokens | Variable | Purpose | | ----------------- | ---------------------------- | | `KF_GITHUB_TOKEN` | GitHub Personal Access Token | | `KF_GITLAB_TOKEN` | GitLab Personal Access Token | | `KF_JIRA_TOKEN` | Jira API token | | `KF_DOCKER_TOKEN` | Docker registry token (`user:pass` or bearer token). If unset, credentials from the Docker keychain are used | Set them temporarily per command: ```bash KF_GITLAB_TOKEN="glpat-…" kingfisher scan --gitlab-group my-group ``` Or export for the session: ```bash export KF_GITLAB_TOKEN="glpat-…" ``` To authenticate Jira requests: ```bash export KF_JIRA_TOKEN="token" ``` _If no token is provided Kingfisher still works for public repositories._ --- ## Exit Codes | Code | Meaning | | ---- | ----------------------------- | | 0 | No findings | | 200 | Findings discovered | | 205 | Validated findings discovered | ## Install a Pre-Commit Hook Run the provided helper script to add a hook that scans staged files before each commit: ```bash # local (current repo only ─ default) ./install-precommit-hook.sh ``` This creates `.git/hooks/pre-commit` that scans the files staged for commit with `kingfisher scan --no-update-check` and blocks the commit if any secrets are found. ```bash # global (every repo on this machine) ./install-precommit-hook.sh --global ### Install a Pre-Receive Hook ``` Installs a global pre-commit hook at `$HOME/.git/hooks/pre-commit`; for every Git repository you use, it runs `kingfisher scan --no-update-check` on the staged files and cancels the commit if any secrets are detected. To check incoming pushes on a server-side repository, install the pre-receive hook: ```bash ./install-prereceive-hook.sh ``` The resulting `.git/hooks/pre-receive` script scans the files in each pushed commit and rejects the push if any secrets are detected. ## Update Checks Kingfisher automatically queries GitHub for a newer release when it starts and tells you whether an update is available. - **Hands-free updates** – Add `--self-update` to any Kingfisher command * If a newer version exists, Kingfisher will download it, replace the running binary, and re-launch itself with the **exact same arguments**. * If the update fails or no newer release is found, the current run proceeds as normal - **Disable version checks** – Pass `--no-update-check` to skip both the startup and shutdown checks entirely # Advanced Options ## Build a Baseline / Detect New Secrets There are situations where a repository already contains checked‑in secrets, but you want to ensure no **new** secrets are introduced. A baseline file lets you document the known findings so future scans only report anything that is not already in that list. The easiest way to create a baseline is to run a normal scan with the `--manage-baseline` flag (typically at a low confidence level to capture all potential matches): ```bash kingfisher scan /path/to/code \ --confidence low \ --manage-baseline \ --baseline-file ./baseline-file.yml ``` Use the same YAML file with the `--baseline-file` option on future scans to hide all recorded findings: ```bash kingfisher scan /path/to/code \ --baseline-file /path/to/baseline-file.yaml ``` See ([docs/BASELINE.md](docs/BASELINE.md)) for full detail. ## List Builtin Rules ```bash kingfisher rules list ``` ## To scan using **only** your own `my_rules.yaml` you could run: ```bash kingfisher scan \ --load-builtins=false \ --rules-path path/to/my_rules.yaml \ ./src/ ``` ## To add your rules alongside the built‑ins: ```bash kingfisher scan \ --rules-path ./custom-rules/ \ --rules-path my_rules.yml \ ~/path/to/project-dir/ ``` ## Other Examples ```bash # Check custom rules - this ensures all regular expressions compile, and can match the rule's `examples` in the YML file kingfisher rules check --rules-path ./my_rules.yml # List GitHub repos kingfisher github repos list --user my-user kingfisher github repos list --organization my-org ``` ## Notable Scan Options - `--no-dedup`: Report every occurrence of a finding (disable the default de-duplicate behavior) - `--confidence `: (low|medium|high) - `--min-entropy `: Override default threshold - `--no-binary`: Skip binary files - `--no-extract-archives`: Do not scan inside archives - `--extraction-depth `: Specifies how deep nested archives should be extracted and scanned (default: 2) - `--redact`: Replaces discovered secrets with a one-way hash for secure output - `--exclude `: Skip any file or directory whose path matches this glob pattern (repeatable, uses gitignore-style syntax, case sensitive) - `--baseline-file `: Ignore matches listed in a baseline YAML file - `--manage-baseline`: Create or update the baseline file with current findings ## Finding Fingerprint The document below details the four-field formula (rule SHA-1, origin label, start & end offsets) hashed with XXH3-64 to create Kingfisher’s 64-bit finding fingerprint, and explains how this ID powers safe deduplication; plus how `--no-dedup` can be used shows every raw match. See ([docs/FINGERPRINT.md](docs/FINGERPRINT.md)) ## Rule Performance Profiling Use `--rule-stats` to collect timing information for every rule. After scanning, the summary prints a **Rule Performance Stats** section showing how many matches each rule produced along with its slowest and average match times. Useful when creating rules or debugging rules. ## CLI Options ```bash kingfisher scan --help ``` ## Business Value By integrating Kingfisher into your development lifecycle, you can: - **Prevent Costly Breaches** Early detection of embedded credentials avoids expensive incident response, legal fees, and reputation damage - **Automate Compliance** Enforce secret‑scanning policies across GitOps, CI/CD, and pull requests to help satisfy SOC 2, PCI‑DSS, GDPR, and other standards - **Reduce Noise, Focus on Real Threats** Validation logic filters out false positives and highlights only active, valid secrets (`--only-valid`) - **Accelerate Dev Workflows** Run in parallel across dozens of languages, integrate with GitHub Actions or any pipeline, and shift security left to minimize delays ## The Risk of Leaked Secrets Real breaches show how one exposed key can snowball into a full-scale incident: - **Uber (2016):** GitHub-hosted AWS key let attackers access data on 57 M riders and 600 k drivers. [[BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42075306)] [[Ars](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/report-uber-paid-hackers-100000-to-keep-2016-data-breach-quiet/)] - **AWS engineer (2020):** Pushed log files with root credentials to GitHub. [[Register](https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/23/aws_engineer_credentials_github/)] [[UpGuard](https://www.upguard.com/breaches/identity-and-access-misstep-how-an-amazon-engineer-exposed-credentials-and-more)] - **Infosys (2023):** Full-admin AWS key left in a public PyPI package for a year. [[Stack](https://www.thestack.technology/infosys-leak-aws-key-exposed-on-pypi/)] [[Blog](https://tomforb.es/blog/infosys-leak/)] - **Microsoft (2023):** Azure SAS token in an AI repo exposed 38 TB of internal data. [[Wiz](https://www.wiz.io/blog/38-terabytes-of-private-data-accidentally-exposed-by-microsoft-ai-researchers)] [[TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/18/microsoft-ai-researchers-accidentally-exposed-terabytes-of-internal-sensitive-data/)] - **GitHub (2023):** RSA SSH host key briefly went public; company rotated it. [[GitHub](https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/we-updated-our-rsa-ssh-host-key/)] Leaked secrets fuel unauthorized access, lateral movement, regulatory fines, and brand-damaging incident-response costs. # Benchmark Results See ([docs/COMPARISON.md](docs/COMPARISON.md))

Kingfisher Runtime Comparison

# Roadmap - More rules - Packages for Linux (deb, rpm) - Please file a [feature request](https://github.com/mongodb/kingfisher/issues) if you have specific features you'd like added # License [Apache2 License](LICENSE)