New record The AI key heist

Bots went hunting for AI keys 3,754 times.

Most wanted: Anthropic keys. They checked 25 hiding spots, from /.env.openai to /.env.anthropic.

Edition of Sunday, Oct 11, 2026 (UTC) · see the latest · updated every 24 hours

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3,754

AI key hunts

▲ +77% vs the day before

hunters

▲ +33% vs the day before

hiding spots

▼ -11% vs the day before

3.0%

of all probes

Whose keys they want requests

Anthropic 2,666

OpenAI 912

MCP & agent configs 145

Google Gemini 31

↳ Keep your keys out of your web root.

Every edition: AI key hunts

Oct 13 Nov 11

How we measure

Requests for paths that point at an AI provider's keys or an AI agent's settings: /.env.openai, /anthropic.json, /.claude/settings.json, /mcp.json, /.cursor/mcp.json and the like. Each path is credited to the first provider whose name it contains. Counted across every site behind the NiceTryBot edge during the UTC day.

Where they looked

The paths scanners tried, most-requested first.

Path	Provider	Requests	Scanners
/.env.openai	OpenAI	880	38
/.env.anthropic	Anthropic	877	38
/.claude/settings.json	Anthropic	877	38
/.claude/settings.local.json	Anthropic	877	38
/.cursor/auth.json	MCP & agent configs	31	3
/.continue/.env	MCP & agent configs	31	3
/.cursor/credentials.json	MCP & agent configs	31	3
/.config/gemini/credentials.json	Google Gemini	31	3
/AGENTS.md	MCP & agent configs	19	5
/CLAUDE.md	Anthropic	19	5
/.github/copilot-instructions.md	MCP & agent configs	19	5
/.well-known/mcp	MCP & agent configs	7	3
/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json	MCP & agent configs	7	3
/anthropic/config.json	Anthropic	4	2
/.openai/config	OpenAI	4	1
/.openai/credentials	OpenAI	4	1
/openai.key	OpenAI	4	1
/openai-proxy/config.json	OpenAI	4	2
/openai-proxy/config.yaml	OpenAI	4	2
/openai-proxy/config.yml	OpenAI	4	2
/openai-proxy.yaml	OpenAI	4	2
/openai-proxy.yml	OpenAI	4	2
/.claude/credentials	Anthropic	4	1
/.claude/credentials.json	Anthropic	4	1
/claude/config.json	Anthropic	4	2

Past editions

Nov 11 Nov 10 Nov 9 Nov 8 Nov 7 Nov 6 Nov 5 Nov 4 Nov 3 Nov 2 Nov 1 Oct 31 Oct 30 Oct 29 Oct 28 Oct 27 Oct 26 Oct 25 Oct 24 Oct 23 Oct 22 Oct 21 Oct 20 Oct 19 Oct 18 Oct 17 Oct 16 Oct 15 Oct 14 Oct 13 Oct 12 Oct 11 Oct 10 Oct 9 Oct 8 Oct 7

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