The AI key heist

Bots went hunting for AI keys 1,892 times.

Most wanted: Anthropic keys. They checked 62 hiding spots, from /.claude/settings.local.json to /img/asset/YXNzZXRzL2dlbWluaV9nZW5lcmF0ZWRfaW1hZ2VfaDA2MWxnaDA2MWxnaDA2MS1jb3B5LndlYnA/gemini_generated_image_h061lgh061lgh061-copy.webp.

Edition of Thursday, Oct 22, 2026 (UTC) · see the latest · updated every 24 hours

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1,892

AI key hunts

▼ -4.7% vs the day before

424

hunters

▼ -5.8% vs the day before

hiding spots

▼ -46% vs the day before

0.2%

of all probes

Whose keys they want requests

Anthropic 632

Google Gemini 533

OpenAI 474

MCP & agent configs 132

Hugging Face 101

↳ 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.local.json	Anthropic	450	62
/img/asset/YXNzZXRzL2dlbWluaV9nZW5lcmF0ZWRfaW1hZ2VfaDA2MWxnaDA2MWxnaDA2MS1jb3B5LndlYnA/gemini_generated_image_h061lgh061lgh061-copy.webp	Google Gemini	319	251
/.cache/huggingface/token	Hugging Face	98	68
/.claude/settings.json	Anthropic	39	22
/.claude/agents/	Anthropic	35	20
/.claude/agents/index.md	Anthropic	35	20
/config/gemini.json	Google Gemini	35	20
/azure-openai.config	OpenAI	35	20
/azure-openai.json	OpenAI	35	20
/azure-openai.yml	OpenAI	35	20
/config/azure-openai.json	OpenAI	35	20
/config/openai.json	OpenAI	35	20
/gemini.config	Google Gemini	35	20
/gemini.env	Google Gemini	35	20
/gemini.json	Google Gemini	35	20
/gemini.yml	Google Gemini	35	20
/.mcp.json	MCP & agent configs	35	20
/my/openaikey	OpenAI	35	20
/openai.config	OpenAI	35	20
/openai.json	OpenAI	35	20
/openai.yml	OpenAI	35	20
/vertex-ai.json	Google Gemini	35	20
/openai-proxy/config.yaml	OpenAI	34	3
/openai-proxy/config.yml	OpenAI	32	3
/openai-proxy.yml	OpenAI	29	3

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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