I know that pushing a commit with an API key is something for which a developer should have his balls cut off, but…
…I’m wondering what I should do if, somehow, I accidentally commit an API key or other sensitive information, an environment variable to the repo.
Should I just revoke the access and leave it as is, or maybe locally remove this commit and force-push a new one without the key? How do you guys handle this situation in a professional environment?
Other answers have only called out rotating the secret which is how you fix this specific failure. After you’ve rotated, delete the key from the repo because secrets don’t belong in repos. Next look at something like git-secrets or gitleaks to use as a local pre-commit hook to help prevent future failures. You’re human and you’re going to make mistakes; plan for them.
Another good habit to be in is to only access secrets from environment variables. I personally use direnv whose configuration file is globally ignored via the core.excludesfile.
You can add other strategies for good defense-in-depth such as a pre-receive hook checking for secrets to ensure no one can push them (eg they didn’t install hooks).
The smoking man clearly has engineered with humans before. Kudos for excellent advice.
Rotate the keys, the old one is on the Internet forever
