Key features
- 100+ built-in APAC credential patterns — AWS keys, GitHub tokens, payment API keys, cloud secrets
- Pre-commit hook — block APAC credential commits before they enter git history
- CI/CD pipeline integration — scan APAC pull request delta for secrets in new commits
- Full history scanning — audit complete APAC git history for historical credential exposure
- SARIF output — APAC GitHub Advanced Security and code scanning integration
- Custom APAC rules — regex patterns for organization-specific credential formats
Best for
- APAC platform teams wanting to prevent credential commits before they happen — Gitleaks pre-commit hooks stop APAC developers from accidentally committing API keys to git history
- APAC DevSecOps teams adding secrets scanning to CI/CD pipelines without purchasing commercial APAC solutions — Gitleaks is free, fast, and CI-native
- APAC security teams auditing legacy repositories or newly acquired APAC company codebases — full history scanning surfaces credential exposures that require APAC rotation regardless of code deletion
Limitations to know
- ! Pre-commit hooks can be bypassed — APAC developers can use `git commit --no-verify` to skip Gitleaks; CI/CD scanning is the non-bypassable APAC enforcement gate
- ! False positives from APAC test/example credentials — real-looking APAC test API keys in documentation and examples trigger Gitleaks; APAC teams must maintain allow-lists for known false positives
- ! Scanning large APAC git histories is slow — repositories with years of history and many APAC commits require significant scanning time for the initial Gitleaks audit run
About Gitleaks
Gitleaks is an open-source secrets detection tool that scans git repositories, individual commits, and staged changes for hardcoded credentials — API keys, database passwords, private keys, cloud access tokens, JWT secrets, and APAC-specific credential patterns — using a configurable regex rule engine with 100+ built-in rules covering major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), SaaS APIs (GitHub, Slack, Stripe, Twilio, APAC payment gateways), and common credential patterns.
Gitleaks's pre-commit hook integration — where APAC developers install Gitleaks as a git pre-commit hook via `gitleaks protect --staged` that runs automatically before each APAC commit, blocking commits containing detected APAC secrets and prompting the developer to remove the credential before committing — prevents APAC credentials from entering git history entirely, rather than detecting them after they've been pushed to APAC remote repositories where rotation and history rewriting are required.
Gitleaks's CI/CD integration — where APAC platform teams run `gitleaks detect --source . --log-opts=origin/main..HEAD` in pull request CI pipelines to scan the APAC commit delta for new secrets introduced since the branch diverged from main — provides an APAC code review gate that catches secrets committed during feature development before they reach the APAC protected main branch, where Gitleaks pre-commit hooks may have been bypassed with `git commit --no-verify`.
Gitleaks's full history scanning — where `gitleaks detect --source .` scans all APAC commits in a repository's complete git history for secrets that may have been committed and later deleted (deletion from git does not prevent the secret from appearing in APAC git log) — enables APAC security teams to audit legacy APAC repositories, acquired company codebases, and newly onboarded APAC partner repositories for historical credential exposures that require APAC secret rotation even if the credential no longer appears in current file contents.
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