New record The AI key heist

Bots went hunting for AI keys 28,747 times.

Most wanted: Anthropic keys. They checked 195 hiding spots, from /.env.openai to /.env.anthropic.

Edition of Monday, Oct 19, 2026 (UTC) · see the latest · updated every 24 hours

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28,747

AI key hunts

▲ +201% vs the day before

131

hunters

– 0.0% vs the day before

195

hiding spots

▲ +183% vs the day before

3.4%

of all probes

Whose keys they want requests

Anthropic 15,317

OpenAI 9,910

Google Gemini 814

Hugging Face 321

xAI 278

↳ 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	3,378	44
/.env.anthropic	Anthropic	3,377	43
/.claude/settings.local.json	Anthropic	3,315	63
/.claude/settings.json	Anthropic	3,168	63
/.env.claude	Anthropic	365	2
/openai/.env	OpenAI	301	2
/config/azure-openai.json	OpenAI	156	22
/config/openai.json	OpenAI	156	22
/.anthropic/credentials.json	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/credentials.json	Anthropic	124	2
/claude-config.json	Anthropic	124	2
/.anthropic/api_key.txt	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/api_key.txt	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/apikey.txt	Anthropic	124	2
/.anthropic/config.json	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/config.json	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/config.yaml	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/config.yml	Anthropic	124	2
/.anthropic/.env	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/.env	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/.env.local	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/.env.prod	Anthropic	124	2
/.anthropic/key.json	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/keys.json	Anthropic	124	2
/anthropic/key.txt	Anthropic	124	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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