Nosey Parker is a command-line tool that finds secrets and sensitive information in textual data. It is useful both for offensive and defensive security testing.
Key features:
- It supports scanning files, directories, and the entire history of Git repositories
- It uses regular expression matching with a set of 95 patterns chosen for high signal-to-noise based on experience and feedback from offensive security engagements
- It groups matches together that share the same secret, further emphasizing signal over noise
- It is fast: it can scan at hundreds of megabytes per second on a single core, and is able to scan 100GB of Linux kernel source history in less than 2 minutes on an older MacBook Pro
This open-source version of Nosey Parker is a reimplementation of the internal version that is regularly used in offensive security engagements at Praetorian. The internal version has additional capabilities for false positive suppression and an alternative machine learning-based detection engine. Read more in blog posts here and here.
Building from source
1. Prerequisites This has been tested on several versions of Ubuntu Linux on x86_64 and on macOS running on both Intel and ARM processors.
Required dependencies:
cargo: recommended approach:install from https://rustup.rsclang: needed for building thevectorscan-syscratecmake: needed for building thevectorscan-syscratepython3: needed for building thevectorscan-syscrate
2. Build using Cargo
cargo build --release
This will produce an optimized binary at target/release/noseyparker.
Docker Usage
A prebuilt Docker image is available for the latest release for x86_64:
docker pull ghcr.io/praetorian-inc/noseyparker:latest
A prebuilt Docker image is available for the most recent commit for x86_64:
docker pull ghcr.io/praetorian-inc/noseyparker:edge
For other architectures (e.g., ARM) you will need to build the Docker image yourself:
docker build -t noseyparker .
Run the Docker image with a mounted volume:
docker run -v "$PWD":/opt/ noseyparker
Note: The Docker image runs noticeably slower than a native binary, particularly on macOS.
Usage quick start
The datastore
Most Nosey Parker commands use a datastore. This is a special directory that Nosey Parker uses to record its findings and maintain its internal state. A datastore will be implicitly created by the scan command if needed. You can also create a datastore explicitly using the datastore init -d PATH command.
Scanning filesystem content for secrets
Nosey Parker has built-in support for scanning files, recursively scanning directories, and scanning the entire history of Git repositories.
For example, if you have a Git clone of CPython locally at cpython.git, you can scan its entire history with the scan command. Nosey Parker will create a new datastore at np.cpython and saves its findings there.
$ noseyparker scan --datastore np.cpython cpython.git
Found 28.30 GiB from 18 plain files and 427,712 blobs from 1 Git repos [00:00:04]
Scanning content ████████████████████ 100% 28.30 GiB/28.30 GiB [00:00:53]
Scanned 28.30 GiB from 427,730 blobs in 54 seconds (538.46 MiB/s); 4,904/4,904 new matches
Rule Distinct Groups Total Matches
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PEM-Encoded Private Key 1,076 1,192
Generic Secret 331 478
netrc Credentials 42 3,201
Generic API Key 2 31
md5crypt Hash 1 2
Run the `report` command next to show finding details.
Scanning Git repos by URL, GitHub username, or GitHub organization name
Nosey Parker can also scan Git repos that have not already been cloned to the local filesystem. The --git-url URL, --github-user NAME, and --github-org NAME options to scan allow you to specify repositories of interest.
For example, to scan the Nosey Parker repo itself:
$ noseyparker scan --datastore np.noseyparker --git-url https://github.com/praetorian-inc/noseyparker
For example, to scan accessible repositories belonging to octocat:
$ noseyparker scan --datastore np.noseyparker --github-user octocat
These input specifiers will use an optional GitHub token if available in the NP_GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable. Providing an access token gives a higher API rate limit and may make additional repositories accessible to you.
See noseyparker help scan for more details.
Summarizing findings
Nosey Parker prints out a summary of its findings when it finishes scanning. You can also run this step separately:
$ noseyparker summarize --datastore np.cpython
Rule Distinct Groups Total Matches
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PEM-Encoded Private Key 1,076 1,192
Generic Secret 331 478
netrc Credentials 42 3,201
Generic API Key 2 31
md5crypt Hash 1 2
Additional output formats are supported, including JSON and JSON lines, via the --format=FORMAT option.
Reporting detailed findings
To see details of Nosey Parker’s findings, use the report command. This prints out a text-based report designed for human consumption:
$ noseyparker report --datastore np.cpython
Finding 1/1452: Generic API Key
Match: QTP4LAknlFml0NuPAbCdtvH4KQaokiQE
Showing 3/29 occurrences:
Occurrence 1:
Git repo: clones/cpython.git
Blob: 04144ceb957f550327637878dd99bb4734282d07
Lines: 70:61-70:100
e buildbottest
notifications:
email: false
webhooks:
urls:
- https://python.zulipchat.com/api/v1/external/travis?api_key=QTP4LAknlFml0NuPAbCdtvH4KQaokiQE&stream=core%2Ftest+runs
on_success: change
on_failure: always
irc:
channels:
# This is set to a secure vari
Occurrence 2:
Git repo: clones/cpython.git
Blob: 0e24bae141ae2b48b23ef479a5398089847200b3
Lines: 174:61-174:100
j4 -uall,-cpu"
notifications:
email: false
webhooks:
urls:
- https://python.zulipchat.com/api/v1/external/travis?api_key=QTP4LAknlFml0NuPAbCdtvH4KQaokiQE&stream=core%2Ftest+runs
on_success: change
on_failure: always
irc:
channels:
# This is set to a secure vari
...
(Note: the findings above are synthetic, invalid secrets.) Additional output formats are supported, including JSON and JSON lines, via the --format=FORMAT option.
Enumerating repositories from GitHub
To list URLs for repositories belonging to GitHub users or organizations, use the github repos list command. This command uses the GitHub REST API to enumerate repositories belonging to one or more users or organizations. For example:
$ noseyparker github repos list --user octocat
https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World.git
https://github.com/octocat/Spoon-Knife.git
https://github.com/octocat/boysenberry-repo-1.git
https://github.com/octocat/git-consortium.git
https://github.com/octocat/hello-worId.git
https://github.com/octocat/linguist.git
https://github.com/octocat/octocat.github.io.git
https://github.com/octocat/test-repo1.git
An optional GitHub Personal Access Token can be provided via the NP_GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable. Providing an access token gives a higher API rate limit and may make additional repositories accessible to you.
Additional output formats are supported, including JSON and JSON lines, via the --format=FORMAT option.
See noseyparker help github for more details.
Getting help
Running the noseyparker binary without arguments prints top-level help and exits. You can get abbreviated help for a particular command by running noseyparker COMMAND -h.
Tip: More detailed help is available with the help command or long-form --help option.
Contributing
Contributions are welcome, particularly new regex rules. Developing new regex rules is detailed in a separate document.
If you are considering making significant code changes, please open an issue first to start discussion.
