NetTuts.com: Protecting Your Keys From GitHub

On the NetTuts.com site there's a new post talking about protecting your keys when using a public site like GitHub. This relates to an easy thing to forget - removing hard-coded credentials from code before pushing it public.

In December 2014, Slashdot ran an alarming story Bots Scanning GitHub To Steal Amazon EC2 Keys, based on developer and blogger Andrew Hoffman's experience trying out Ruby on Rails on Amazon with AWS S3. He inadvertently committed an application.yml file with his AWS keys. [...] It's an easy mistake and most of us have probably done a similar thing at one point or another. And it's not just AWS keys that are at risk. As our use of cloud-based services increases, the expanding use of a broad variety of service API keys can be leveraged by hackers and spammers alike.

He goes through a solution he's found to help protect those credentials, in this case working with the configuration of a Yii framework-based application. He starts with a mention of .gitignore but points out that it could have unexpected results from "quirks" in its handling. He suggests a different option - using a configuration file that lives someplace outside of the main git directory and can be referenced directly from inside the application. He provides two kinds of examples: one using a PHP-based configuration and another based on an INI file. He finishes the post with a mention about WordPress plugins and the fact that they're (usually) stored in a database and open to exposure if a SQL injection vulnerability is found.
Link: http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/protecting-your-keys-from-github--cms-23002