Gitleaks

What Gitleaks is

Gitleaks is free, MIT-licensed software for detecting passwords, API keys, tokens, and other secrets in Git repositories, files, and data streamed through stdin. It can scan repositories, directories, individual files, or standard input, and runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, or self-hosted systems. Custom detection rules can use Go regular expressions, entropy checks, path matching, keywords, and allowlists. A prior report can be used as a baseline so subsequent scans report only new findings. Output formats include JSON, CSV, JUnit, SARIF, and templates. The project documents use as a pre-commit hook and a GitHub Action, along with CI/CD and pull-request scanning. Installation options include Homebrew, Docker, Go, and prebuilt release binaries. A redaction option can mask secrets in logs and standard output, with a default redaction value of 100%. The project describes the software as feature complete, with future releases limited to security patches; its security policy supports only the latest version. Vulnerabilities should be reported privately through GitHub rather than as public issues.