GitGuardian Reports an 81% Surge of AI-Service Leaks as 29M Secrets Hit Public GitHub

GitGuardian's 2025 "State of Secrets Sprawl" report finds a sharp increase in leaked secrets driven by AI-assisted development and broader non-human identity (NHI) usage: public commits rose 43% YoY, newly leaked secrets on GitHub increased 34% (~29 million detected), and AI-assisted commits (e.g., Claude Code) had a ~3.2% secret leak rate vs a 1.5% baseline. The report highlights fast-growing AI-service credential leaks (+81% YoY), internal repositories as the largest exposure reservoir, long-lived credentials persisting, and failing remediation (64% of valid secrets from 2022 still not revoked in 2026), and recommends treating NHIs with dedicated governance and remediation automation.