What Happened
Security firm Truffle Security scanned public code repositories, Hugging Face datasets, Docker images, package registries, and CI logs, uncovering 64,024 unique AWS access key pairs across more than 431,000 individual findings dated between August 2022 and August 2026. Roughly 91 percent of the leaked keys turned up inside Hugging Face model repositories, notebooks, and Docker images rather than traditional source code repositories. Among the keys with complete, verifiable credentials, 88 percent still authenticated against AWS as of August 10, 2026. Researchers tied 817 of the working keys to named companies, including 526 root account keys and 242 keys attached to IAM users holding full AdministratorAccess permissions. Fewer than 14 percent of affected accounts showed evidence a newer key replaced the exposed one, meaning the remaining credentials sat unrotated since the moment they leaked.
Why This Matters for Canadian Organizations
Canadian companies building on AWS, particularly fintechs, retailers, and public sector teams running cloud migrations under provincial data residency rules, face the same exposure pattern documented here. Development teams experimenting with AI and machine learning workflows on Hugging Face carry added risk, since notebooks and model repositories accounted for the largest share of leaks in this research. Under the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ B-13 technology and cyber risk guideline, regulated entities bear responsibility for managing cloud credentials and third-party access across their environment, not only production systems. A leaked key granting access to systems holding customer data also triggers notification duties under PIPEDA, regardless of whether an attacker used the access before discovery.
What to Do
Security teams should deploy automated secret scanning across CI/CD pipelines, pre-commit hooks, and any repository pushed to a public host, including Hugging Face and Docker Hub. Static, long-lived access keys deserve replacement with short-lived credentials issued through IAM roles wherever workloads support it. Any key touching a public location, even briefly and even if later deleted, needs immediate rotation rather than a wait-and-see approach. Full findings are available from BleepingComputer.
