Claude Code's “Don't Ask Again” File Exposes Passwords and Keys in 1,122 Public Copies on GitHub
Claude Code's 'Don't Ask Again' feature saves commands with secrets to public GitHub repos.
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Summary
Anthropic's Claude Code AI assistant has a feature that, when enabled, saves user commands, including sensitive information like passwords and API keys, into project settings files. A security analysis revealed that 1,122 public GitHub repositories now contain these exposed secrets, making them accessible to anyone.
The lesson from this incident
Full lessonAnthropic's Claude Code assistant includes a 'Don't Ask Again' feature that persists user-approved commands — including passwords and API keys — into project-level settings files. When developers commit these files to public GitHub repositories without understanding what data is being stored, those secrets become instantly accessible to anyone on the internet. This incident illustrates a dangerous gap between developer convenience features and secure-by-default design: tools that silently write sensitive data to disk can inadvertently automate secret exposure at scale. The core failure is two-fold — the tool's default behavior was not sufficiently protective, and many users lacked awareness that committing project settings files could expose credentials.
What helps against this
How we list vendors- Secrets management
API keys, tokens and passwords stop leaking from code, chat and configuration files.
- Data loss prevention (DLP)
Sensitive data cannot quietly leave by email, upload, USB stick or AI tool.
- Security awareness training and phishing simulation
People recognise and report attacks instead of falling for them.