The AI key heist

Bots went hunting for AI keys 7,605 times.

Most wanted: Anthropic keys. They checked 132 hiding spots, from /.claude/settings.json to /.claude/settings.local.json.

Edition of Friday, Oct 16, 2026 (UTC) · see the latest · updated every 24 hours

Share on X

7,605

AI key hunts

▲ +861% vs the day before

152

hunters

▲ +153% vs the day before

132

hiding spots

▲ +81% vs the day before

0.9%

of all probes

Whose keys they want requests

Anthropic 5,036

OpenAI 1,999

Google Gemini 235

Hugging Face 130

MCP & agent configs 108

↳ 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
/.claude/settings.json	Anthropic	1,637	59
/.claude/settings.local.json	Anthropic	1,637	59
/.env.openai	OpenAI	1,636	58
/.env.anthropic	Anthropic	1,636	58
/.cache/huggingface/token	Hugging Face	129	70
/.well-known/mcp	MCP & agent configs	32	3
/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json	MCP & agent configs	32	3
/.config/openai/keys.json	OpenAI	31	3
/.config/gemini/keys.json	Google Gemini	31	3
/.openai/keys.json	OpenAI	31	3
/.gemini/keys.json	Google Gemini	31	3
/openai.json	OpenAI	29	2
/gemini.env	Google Gemini	29	2
/config/openai.json	OpenAI	29	2
/openai.yml	OpenAI	28	1
/gemini.json	Google Gemini	28	1
/gemini.yml	Google Gemini	28	1
/config/azure-openai.json	OpenAI	28	1
/config/gemini.json	Google Gemini	28	1
/azure-openai.config	OpenAI	28	1
/azure-openai.json	OpenAI	28	1
/azure-openai.yml	OpenAI	28	1
/vertex-ai.json	Google Gemini	28	1
/my/openaikey	OpenAI	28	1
/openai.config	OpenAI	28	1

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

More from the edge

Bot Weather · Nov 11

20% of yesterday's traffic was scanners.

How much of yesterday's web traffic was scanners, as a weather report.

Fraud Desk · Nov 11

32,669 requests got turned away at the door.

Most Wanted · Nov 11

Bots' most wanted file: /download.php

The files bots asked for most yesterday. It's usually your .env.

Cloud Landlords · Nov 11

81% of scanning came from rented servers.

Scanners don't own servers. They rent them. Here are the landlords.

Speedrun · Nov 11

New sites get scanned in 1,245 minutes.

How many minutes a brand-new website gets before the first scanner shows up.

Costume Party · Nov 11

57% of "browsers" were bots in costume.

Bots dressed up as Chrome, caught by their handshake. Plus the honest bots wearing name tags.

Want these bots off your site?

Put your domains behind the NiceTryBot edge. You'll see every request, tag the scanners, and send them to the gym while real people get on with their day.

See how it works