the wildest part is algolia just not responding. you email them saying "hey 39 of your customers have admin keys in their frontend" and they ghost you? thats way worse than the keys themselves imo. like the whole point of docsearch is they manage the crawling FOR you, but then the "run your own crawler" docs basically hand you a footgun with zero guardrails. they could just... not issue admin-scoped keys through that flow
gregoriol 10 hours ago [-]
Why contact Algolia when it is the users' responsibility to handle their keys? Contact all the users.
pwdisswordfishy 3 hours ago [-]
The comment you're responding to is output of an LLM.
Kwpolska 7 hours ago [-]
If this happens so often, perhaps Algolia should improve their stuff to prevent this? For example, by implementing a dedicated search endpoint that doesn't accept normal API keys, but only dedicated read-only keys.
interstice 6 hours ago [-]
It is the users responsibility to operate foot guns responsibly.
jgalt212 4 hours ago [-]
because if it's easy to dangerously use one's product that reflect poorly on the product. Algolia should help its clients from making silly mistakes.
Dazzler5648 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for this. I was maybe using one of these keys until this morning. When I logged in at dashboard.algolia.com and went to Settings -> API Keys, I found that none of the keys (Search, Analytics, Usage, Monitoring) matched the key I was using on a frontend. I made a decent attempt looking for that old key anywhere in their admin panels and could not find it. poof!
So perhaps at some point, they were only giving admin keys (because I don't remember there being a choice; and I would think given the choice I'd make the right one) and when called out (or sometime prior) realized the problem and made a new Settings -> API Keys page. Currently on the page the first one listed is the Search Key, with the subtext "This is the public API key which can be safely used in your frontend code. This key is usable for search queries and it's also able to list the indices you've got access to."
pmdr 8 hours ago [-]
Twenty years ago every PHP website had search. We forgot how to do it.
gus_massa 5 hours ago [-]
I remember that time, it was usually better to go to google and use "site:".
NicuCalcea 2 hours ago [-]
I still do that for almost everything.
Etheryte 5 hours ago [-]
Having a search and having a functional search are two very different things though. To this day, the search on many sites is so bad that it's actually better to use a search engine and scope by site rather than use the site search.
omnimus 8 hours ago [-]
To be fair, the search was thanks to databases and it was usually not very good (it takes work to set correctly).
dawnerd 4 hours ago [-]
Algolia really needs to make using the admin key less easy. I’ve almost copied it before when setting up a frontend. It should be tucked away and require auth to view.
stickynotememo 18 hours ago [-]
So why hasn't the HomeAssistant docs page been nuked yet?
netsharc 18 hours ago [-]
Man, talk about unnecessary graphs... ok graph 2 is maybe tolerable, although it's showing the popularity of the projects, not a metric of how many errors/vulnerabilities found in those projects.
I'm not a newspaper editor, but I think if this was an article for one, they'd also say the graphs are unnecessary. It smells of "I need some visual stuff to make this text interesting"...
binarymax 17 hours ago [-]
Dude there’s only three graphs in there. Do they really bother you that much? The third may be a bit unnecessary but I think the visuals add to the post.
netsharc 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
shermantanktop 15 hours ago [-]
If you’re “helping a kid” then I guess I can help you. Help is criticism delivered with a constructive tone. Criticism can be helpful if you look past the tone.
If you want to help, you should sound helpful.
saghm 11 hours ago [-]
Fully agreed; this is something that always baffles me when it's misunderstood so often. Regardless of whether it's logical or not, tone and attitude in practice does influence whether people are convinced by something, so if your goal is to actually change how someone else acts, you will not be as effective if you don't care about how you come across. Being right is not always enough, so even if the style of communicating doesn't seem like it "should" matter, in practice it genuinely does if success is measured by whether the change happens or not.
Of course, if the goal is just to be right rather than to convince someone else about what's right, how you're saying something doesn't matter, but at that point you've already reached the goal before you started talking to them, so it's worth reexamining what you're actually looking to get out of a conversation at that point.
integralid 16 hours ago [-]
I liked the graphs. When skimming posts i often stop on graphical elements and decide if I want to understand the context or continue skimming. In this context, all three graphs were useful for me.
Posts with just text are sense and just not nice to read. That's why even text-only blog posts have a tendency to include loosely-related image at the top, to catch reader's eye.
16 hours ago [-]
throwaway5465 18 hours ago [-]
It's Friday night / Saturday morning. Who wants to be reading text?
Especially on night mode themes.
Besides, can we read anymore? In the age of 'GPT summarise it me' attention spans and glib commentary not about the content of the article being all many people have to add, perhaps liberal application of visualisations adds digestive value.
still 404 but the standard is .well-known/security.txt
trrra 10 hours ago [-]
Is this aloglia's (or any provider) responsability or each individual integration ?
TechSquidTV 17 hours ago [-]
I have been developing an OpenClaw-like agent that automates exactly this type of attack.
_pdp_ 16 hours ago [-]
Why? This is just regex search and there are plenty of tools that do this perfectly fine.
emotiveengine 13 hours ago [-]
Have to agree with _pdp_ on this one. I just don't see the need for an LLM agent to do a recursive grep for API keys in public repos.
Not saying people shouldn't build these tools, but the use case is lost on me.
It feels like the industry is in this weird phase of trying to replace 30-year-old, perfectly optimized shell utilities with multi-shot agent workflows that literally cost money to run. A basic Python script with a regex matcher and the GitHub API will find these keys faster, cheaper, and more reliably.
None of those proven tools would make a man feel like a wannabe Mr. Robot.
hrmtst93837 10 hours ago [-]
Automating these sweeps works fine until you need to escalate beyond public misconfig and start hitting rate limits or WAF traps, at that point, blending in gets harder than it looks. If you focus on fast key discovery, expect a lot of false positives unless you build context awareness for the apps those keys unlock, otherwise you just end up chasing useless tokens all day.
fix4fun 18 hours ago [-]
Interesting how many people already are playing with these API keys ? ;)
toomuchtodo 18 hours ago [-]
Great write up. Reminder that if you commit these to a Github Gist and the provider partners with GitHub for secrets scanning, they’ll rapidly be invalidated.
pwdisswordfishy 18 hours ago [-]
That's just a tautology.
"If the secrets issuer partners with X-corp for secret scanning so that secrets get invalidated when you X them, then when you X them the secrets will be invalidated".
The above is a true statement for all X.
nightpool 18 hours ago [-]
? Yes? Toomuchtodo is reminding the author (and other commenters), that github gists are one way to make sure secrets are secured / remediated before making a public post like this. Maybe not the most responsible whitehat action, but I can see it being useful in some cases where outreach is impractical / has failed.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Algolia has implemented this
TurdF3rguson 17 hours ago [-]
I'm not following this at all. It seems like OP is saying if you share a secret in your (private?) gist and give Algolia permission to read the gist, they will invalidate it. But why would the secret be in a gist and not a repo? Also if you're aware enough to add that partner it seems you're aware to not do dumb things like that in the first place.
richbell 17 hours ago [-]
If you find an exposed token in the wild, for a service supported by GitHub Secret Scanning, uploading it to a Gist will either immediately revoke it or notify the owner.
TurdF3rguson 16 hours ago [-]
Ok I see, so any public gist with an algolia key in it will get invalidated? And it would have to follow some pattern like ALGOLIA_KEY=xxx ?
17 hours ago [-]
wat10000 18 hours ago [-]
English is not formal logic.
In formal logic, that statement is true whether X is GitHub, or Lockheed-Martin, Safeway, or the local hardware store.
In English, the statement serves to inform (or remind) you that GitHub has a secret scanning program that many providers actually do partner with.
pwdisswordfishy 17 hours ago [-]
Yes, and in the real world where Grice's Maxim of Relevance is in force, then when the secrets issuer that is the subject of the discussion isn't one of those partners, then an informative "reminder" that GitHub "has a secret scanning program" with a bunch of other partners is not actually informative. It's as superfluous and unhelpful as calling to let someone know you're not interested in the item they've posted for sale on Craiglist (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWG3jKzKcm8>).
wat10000 17 hours ago [-]
It's more useful than telling someone that their statement is a tautology in formal logic.
pwdisswordfishy 3 hours ago [-]
No it's not.
wat10000 3 hours ago [-]
Yes it is. Reminding somebody of this feature is useful to somebody, even if it's not completely relevant to the topic being discussed. Calling out a supposed tautology is the opposite of useful: it helps nobody and just clutters things up.
richbell 17 hours ago [-]
How is reminding people that they can safely revoke exposed API keys not informative? Why are you being so combative?
18 hours ago [-]
robutsume 1 hours ago [-]
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CloakHQ 1 hours ago [-]
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aneyadeng 13 hours ago [-]
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newzino 13 hours ago [-]
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ClaudioAnthrop 17 hours ago [-]
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cc-d 18 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 17:16:34 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
So perhaps at some point, they were only giving admin keys (because I don't remember there being a choice; and I would think given the choice I'd make the right one) and when called out (or sometime prior) realized the problem and made a new Settings -> API Keys page. Currently on the page the first one listed is the Search Key, with the subtext "This is the public API key which can be safely used in your frontend code. This key is usable for search queries and it's also able to list the indices you've got access to."
I'm not a newspaper editor, but I think if this was an article for one, they'd also say the graphs are unnecessary. It smells of "I need some visual stuff to make this text interesting"...
If you want to help, you should sound helpful.
Of course, if the goal is just to be right rather than to convince someone else about what's right, how you're saying something doesn't matter, but at that point you've already reached the goal before you started talking to them, so it's worth reexamining what you're actually looking to get out of a conversation at that point.
Posts with just text are sense and just not nice to read. That's why even text-only blog posts have a tendency to include loosely-related image at the top, to catch reader's eye.
Especially on night mode themes.
Besides, can we read anymore? In the age of 'GPT summarise it me' attention spans and glib commentary not about the content of the article being all many people have to add, perhaps liberal application of visualisations adds digestive value.
Not saying people shouldn't build these tools, but the use case is lost on me.
It feels like the industry is in this weird phase of trying to replace 30-year-old, perfectly optimized shell utilities with multi-shot agent workflows that literally cost money to run. A basic Python script with a regex matcher and the GitHub API will find these keys faster, cheaper, and more reliably.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/acc...
"If the secrets issuer partners with X-corp for secret scanning so that secrets get invalidated when you X them, then when you X them the secrets will be invalidated".
The above is a true statement for all X.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Algolia has implemented this
In formal logic, that statement is true whether X is GitHub, or Lockheed-Martin, Safeway, or the local hardware store.
In English, the statement serves to inform (or remind) you that GitHub has a secret scanning program that many providers actually do partner with.