Question 290
A CI security check discovers a production cloud API token and a private signing key committed to source-repository history before any application is deployed. Which specialized assessment and response best match this finding?
Explanation
Correct Answer
Repository secret scanning searches versioned files and history for credential patterns before or independently of execution. An exposed API token or signing key is an immediate identity and supply-chain risk: revoke or rotate the live secret, investigate potential use and prevent new commits through scanning and secret-management controls. Cleaning Git history alone cannot invalidate copies already fetched by others. This assesses leaked credentials, unlike static analysis of dangerous application function calls in a different question.
Incorrect Answers
Dynamic application security testing exercises a running service to discover behavior such as injection or improper authorization. It is useful once software is deployed or a test instance is available, but no application request is necessary to find a secret stored in repository history. A DAST scan may never encounter the original committed key. The urgent response is to identify and revoke exposed credentials, not merely probe HTTP endpoints.
A load-balancer packet capture can reveal network conversations and certain exposed data flows, but it cannot inventory strings in an unexecuted source-control history. In this case the artifact is a committed token and signing key, and attackers may have copied them long before any production traffic occurred. Investigators can examine network or API logs for abuse after revocation, but repository secret detection locates the original exposure.
Memory profiling diagnoses allocation patterns, leaks or runtime secret handling within executing processes. It cannot reliably determine whether source commits in Git history contain sensitive credentials, and it does not rotate a compromised signing key. The evidence identifies a static repository exposure before deployment. The appropriate tool must inspect repository content and history, then trigger the credential-owner response and a preventive commit policy.






CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) Practice Tests