Secrets in artifacts
Secrets in artifacts are one more thing that you need to watch out for because they are tougher to extract than from other sources. Artifacts are the images and applications produced by a compiler and/or build process. These can range from something as large as a container or virtual machine (VM) image to something as small as a plugin for VS Code.
How do secrets end up in artifacts?
Some people think that once packed up in an artifact, any secrets are beyond extraction. But that’s not the case at all.
If you go back to Chapter 3, Securing Your Code-Writing Tools, a process was explained for getting under the hood of a VS Code plugin. All you have to do is change the .vsix extension to .zip and use an unzipping tool to get access to the source code. We recommended using SCA, SAST, and/or DAST tools to evaluate the code for security issues. But what if there’s a secret in that source, too? If it’s not your secret, you might think it...
