Secrets Sentinel — v5.0.0

Context-aware AI secret detection for CI/CD pipelines, pre-commit hooks, and code scanners.
Fine-tuned DeBERTa-v3-base · F1 = 0.9999 · Precision = 1.0 · <500ms inference · Runs fully on-prem.

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What's New in v5.0.0

v5 is a full fine-tune of all 184M parameters on data_v10 (1.14M training lines, 195 negative patterns), fixing the remaining false negatives from v4 and further reducing false positives:

Combined with all v4 false-positive fixes:

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The Problem

Secrets pushed to repositories create a critical, expensive security incident:

• Credential rotation is mandatory the moment a key hits git history — even for 1 second
• Regex scanners miss generic secrets (password = "s3cr3t!" has no known pattern)
• LLMs are too slow for pre-receive hooks with 5-second time limits
• False positives kill adoption — developers disable scanners that cry wolf

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Why This Model?

Key advantage: Context-aware inference. password = os.environ.get('DB_PASS') is safe; password = "hunter2" is not. Regex tools can't tell the difference.

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Model Details

Training Data (v5)

Evaluation History

v5 achieves Precision = 1.0 (zero false positives on the held-out eval set) with near-perfect recall, trained as a full fine-tune on data_v10 which incorporates all confirmed real-world FP and FN patterns at scale.

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Quick Start

Simplest Usage

from transformers import pipeline

detector = pipeline("text-classification", model="hypn05/secrets-sentinel")

lines = [
    "AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY'",
    "password = os.environ.get('DB_PASSWORD')",
    "api_key = 'sk-proj-abc123def456ghi789'",
    "uses: docker/login-action@5e57cd118135c172c3672efd75eb46360885c0ef",
    "DB_PASSWORD=null",
]

for line, result in zip(lines, detector(lines)):
    label = "SECRET" if result["label"] == "LABEL_1" else "safe  "
    print(f"[{label}] {result['score']:.1%}  {line[:70]}")

Output:

[SECRET] 100.0%  AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY'
[safe  ]  99.8%  password = os.environ.get('DB_PASSWORD')
[SECRET]  99.9%  api_key = 'sk-proj-abc123def456ghi789'
[safe  ]  99.9%  uses: docker/login-action@5e57cd118135c172c3672efd75eb46360885c0ef
[safe  ]  99.7%  DB_PASSWORD=null

Production Class (Batched, GPU-Optimised)

import torch
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForSequenceClassification
from typing import List, Tuple

class SecretsScanner:
    """
    Production-ready secret scanner with batched inference.
    Designed for pre-receive hooks (5-second budget) and CI/CD pipelines.
    """
    def __init__(self, threshold: float = 0.85, device: str = None, batch_size: int = 256):
        self.threshold  = threshold
        self.batch_size = batch_size
        self.device     = device or ("cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu")

        model_id = "hypn05/secrets-sentinel"
        self.tok = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id, use_fast=True)
        self.mdl = AutoModelForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained(
            model_id,
            torch_dtype=torch.float16 if self.device == "cuda" else torch.float32,
        ).to(self.device).eval()

    def scan(self, lines: List[str]) -> List[Tuple[str, float, bool]]:
        """
        Returns list of (line, confidence, is_secret) tuples.
        Only lines with confidence >= threshold are flagged.
        """
        results = []
        for i in range(0, len(lines), self.batch_size):
            batch = lines[i : i + self.batch_size]
            enc   = self.tok(batch, padding=True, truncation=True,
                             max_length=128, return_tensors="pt").to(self.device)
            with torch.inference_mode():
                probs = torch.softmax(self.mdl(**enc).logits, dim=1)[:, 1]
            for line, prob in zip(batch, probs.cpu().tolist()):
                results.append((line, prob, prob >= self.threshold))
        return results

    def scan_diff(self, diff: str) -> List[Tuple[str, float]]:
        """Scan a git diff — only checks added lines (starting with +)."""
        added = [l[1:].strip() for l in diff.splitlines()
                 if l.startswith("+") and not l.startswith("+++")]
        return [(line, conf) for line, conf, flag in self.scan(added) if flag]

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Integration Examples

1. Git Pre-Receive Hook

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# Save as: .git/hooks/pre-receive   (chmod +x)
import sys, subprocess, torch
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForSequenceClassification

THRESHOLD = 0.85
MODEL_ID  = "hypn05/secrets-sentinel"

tok = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(MODEL_ID, use_fast=True)
mdl = AutoModelForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained(MODEL_ID).eval()

def check_push(old, new, ref):
    diff = subprocess.check_output(
        ["git", "diff", old, new, "--unified=0"], text=True, errors="ignore"
    )
    added = [l[1:] for l in diff.splitlines() if l.startswith("+") and not l.startswith("+++")]
    if not added:
        return []

    enc   = tok(added, padding=True, truncation=True, max_length=128, return_tensors="pt")
    probs = torch.softmax(mdl(**enc).logits, dim=1)[:, 1].tolist()
    return [(line, p) for line, p in zip(added, probs) if p >= THRESHOLD]

secrets = []
for line in sys.stdin:
    old, new, ref = line.split()
    secrets.extend(check_push(old, new, ref))

if secrets:
    print(f"\n\033[31m✗ PUSH REJECTED — {len(secrets)} secret(s) detected:\033[0m")
    for line, conf in secrets[:5]:
        print(f"  [{conf:.0%}] {line[:100]}")
    sys.exit(1)

print("\033[32m✓ No secrets detected.\033[0m")

2. GitHub Actions Workflow

# .github/workflows/secret-scan.yml
name: Secret Detection

on:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches: [main, master, develop]

jobs:
  scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: "3.11"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: pip install transformers torch --quiet

      - name: Scan for secrets
        run: |
          python3 - <<'EOF'
          import subprocess, sys, torch
          from transformers import pipeline

          detector = pipeline("text-classification", model="hypn05/secrets-sentinel",
                              device=0 if torch.cuda.is_available() else -1)

          base = subprocess.check_output(
              ["git", "merge-base", "HEAD", "origin/main"], text=True
          ).strip()
          diff = subprocess.check_output(
              ["git", "diff", base, "HEAD", "--unified=0"], text=True, errors="ignore"
          )
          lines = [l[1:] for l in diff.splitlines()
                   if l.startswith("+") and not l.startswith("+++") and l[1:].strip()]

          if not lines:
              print("No changed lines to scan.")
              sys.exit(0)

          results  = detector(lines, batch_size=64, truncation=True, max_length=128)
          findings = [(l, r["score"]) for l, r in zip(lines, results)
                      if r["label"] == "LABEL_1" and r["score"] >= 0.85]

          if findings:
              print(f"::error::Found {len(findings)} potential secret(s)!")
              for line, conf in findings:
                  print(f"  [{conf:.0%}] {line[:120]}")
              sys.exit(1)

          print(f"✓ Scanned {len(lines)} lines — no secrets detected.")
          EOF

3. Pre-Commit Hook (local development)

# .pre-commit-config.yaml
repos:
  - repo: local
    hooks:
      - id: secrets-sentinel
        name: Secrets Sentinel
        language: python
        entry: python3 -c "
          import sys, torch
          from transformers import pipeline

          detector = pipeline('text-classification', model='hypn05/secrets-sentinel')
          lines    = [l for l in sys.stdin.read().splitlines() if l.strip()]
          results  = detector(lines, batch_size=32, truncation=True, max_length=128)
          found    = [(l,r) for l,r in zip(lines,results) if r['label']=='LABEL_1' and r['score']>0.85]

          if found:
              print(f'BLOCKED: {len(found)} secret(s) detected')
              sys.exit(1)
          "
        pass_filenames: false
        always_run: true

4. Python Scanner Script

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""scan_repo.py — scan an entire directory for hardcoded secrets."""
import sys
from pathlib import Path
from transformers import pipeline

SKIP_EXTS = {".lock", ".min.js", ".map", ".png", ".jpg", ".pdf"}
SKIP_DIRS = {"node_modules", ".git", "vendor", "__pycache__", "dist", "build"}
THRESHOLD = 0.85

detector = pipeline("text-classification", model="hypn05/secrets-sentinel")

root     = Path(sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) > 1 else ".")
findings = []

for path in sorted(root.rglob("*")):
    if not path.is_file():
        continue
    if any(d in path.parts for d in SKIP_DIRS):
        continue
    if path.suffix.lower() in SKIP_EXTS:
        continue

    try:
        lines = [l.rstrip() for l in path.read_text(errors="ignore").splitlines()
                 if 4 <= len(l.strip()) <= 500]
    except Exception:
        continue

    if not lines:
        continue

    results = detector(lines, batch_size=64, truncation=True, max_length=128)
    for ln, (line, result) in enumerate(zip(lines, results), 1):
        if result["label"] == "LABEL_1" and result["score"] >= THRESHOLD:
            findings.append((path, ln, line, result["score"]))

if findings:
    print(f"\nFound {len(findings)} potential secret(s):\n")
    for path, ln, line, conf in sorted(findings, key=lambda x: -x[3]):
        print(f"  [{conf:.0%}] {path}:{ln}")
        print(f"         {line[:100]}")
else:
    print("No secrets detected.")

5. CPU-Optimised ONNX Version

For CPU-only environments (CI agents, lightweight containers):

from optimum.onnxruntime import ORTModelForSequenceClassification
from transformers import AutoTokenizer
import torch

# ~244 MB vs 750 MB, ~4× faster on CPU
model_id = "hypn05/secrets-sentinel-cpu"
tok      = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model    = ORTModelForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained(model_id)

lines  = ["password = 'hunter2'", "name = os.environ.get('USER')"]
enc    = tok(lines, padding=True, truncation=True, max_length=128, return_tensors="pt")
probs  = torch.softmax(model(**enc).logits, dim=1)[:, 1]

for line, prob in zip(lines, probs):
    print(f"[{'SECRET' if prob >= 0.85 else 'safe  '}] {prob:.1%}  {line}")

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What It Detects

The model understands context, not just patterns. It catches generic secrets that regex tools miss:

True Positives (correctly flagged)

# Hardcoded passwords
password = "s3cr3tP@ssw0rd#2024"
'password' => 'Edward#2025'
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: hunter2

# API keys & tokens
OPENAI_API_KEY = "sk-proj-abc123..."
ghp_aBcDeFgHiJkLmNoPqRsTuVwXyZ123456  # GitHub PAT
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY = "sk_live_abc123..."
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = "wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"

# Database connection strings
DATABASE_URL = "postgresql://admin:secret@db.prod.internal/myapp"
MONGODB_URI = "mongodb://root:p@ssword@cluster.mongodb.net/prod"

# Private keys
private_key = "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----"
ssh_key = "-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----"

# Webhook secrets
WEBHOOK_SECRET = "whsec_abc123xyz789"
SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET = "abc123def456ghi789"

True Negatives (correctly ignored)

# Environment variable references (not hardcoded)
password = os.environ.get("DB_PASSWORD")
api_key  = process.env.API_KEY
secret   = System.getenv("JWT_SECRET")

# Template / example files
DB_PASSWORD=null
REDIS_PASSWORD=YOURPASSWORD
MAIL_PASSWORD=changeme

# Code comments and logging
# TODO: add password validation
logger.info("Checking password strength")

# GitHub Actions (pinned SHAs are NOT secrets)
uses: docker/login-action@5e57cd118135c172c3672efd75eb46360885c0ef

# Test fixtures with obvious placeholders
expect(user.email).toBe("test@example.com")
DB_HOST=localhost

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Performance Benchmarks

For pre-receive hooks: A typical 200-line diff scans in <2 seconds on CPU (batch mode).

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Limitations

• Single-line context only — analyzes one line at a time (128-token max). Multi-line PEM blocks need a dedicated regex check alongside this model.
• Context window — very long lines are truncated at 128 tokens.
• Custom internal formats — proprietary secret formats not seen during training may be missed. Fine-tune on your own labeled examples for best results.
• Redacted patterns — REDACTED, ***, <secret> placeholders are intentionally ignored.

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Related Resources

• CPU/ONNX version: hypn05/secrets-sentinel-cpu — INT8-quantized, ~244 MB, 4× smaller
• Base model: microsoft/deberta-v3-base
• Similar tools: gitleaks, trufflehog, detect-secrets

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FAQ

Q: How does it compare to regex-based tools like gitleaks or trufflehog?
A: Those tools excel at known-format secrets (AWS AKIA keys, GitHub ghp_ tokens). This model catches generic secrets — any password = "..." or token = "..." regardless of format — at the cost of slightly higher false positive rates on edge cases. Best results come from using both: regex tools for known formats, this model for everything else.

Q: Can I fine-tune it on my organisation's patterns?
A: Yes — the base model is MIT-licensed. Label a few hundred examples of your internal secret formats and fine-tune. The architecture (DeBERTa-v3) is well-suited to incremental adaptation.

Q: Does it send my code anywhere?
A: No. Run the model locally or on your own infrastructure. Inference is fully on-premise — only model weights are downloaded from HuggingFace once.

Q: What confidence threshold should I use?
A: 0.85 for pre-receive hooks (low FP, may miss some edge cases). 0.60 for retrospective scans where you want higher recall and can accept some FP for manual review.

Q: How often is the model updated?
A: Continuously — each version is trained on newly identified FP and FN patterns from real-world scanning. v5 specifically addresses CloudFormation Default: password lines and Redis --requirepass docker-compose commands, while v4 addressed GitHub Actions workflow files, PHP config templates, and Laravel test fixtures.

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Citation

@model{secrets_sentinel_2026,
  title   = {Secrets Sentinel: Context-Aware Secret Detection for CI/CD Pipelines},
  author  = {hypn05},
  year    = {2026},
  url     = {https://huggingface.co/hypn05/secrets-sentinel},
  note    = {Fine-tuned DeBERTa-v3-base for binary secret/safe line classification}
}

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License

MIT — free to use, modify, and deploy in commercial systems. Attribution appreciated.

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Built to stop the #1 cause of cloud credential theft: secrets accidentally committed to git.