Testing for Sensitive Data Exposure

When to Use

• During authorized penetration tests when assessing data protection controls
• When evaluating applications for GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, or other data protection compliance
• For identifying leaked API keys, credentials, tokens, and secrets in application responses
• When testing whether sensitive data is properly encrypted in transit and at rest
• During security assessments of APIs that handle PII, financial data, or health records

Prerequisites

• Authorization: Written penetration testing agreement with data handling scope
• Burp Suite Professional: For intercepting and analyzing responses for sensitive data
• trufflehog: Secret scanning tool (pip install trufflehog)
• gitleaks: Git repository secret scanner (go install github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks/v8@latest)
• curl/httpie: For manual endpoint testing
• Browser DevTools: For examining local storage, session storage, and cached data
• testssl.sh: TLS configuration testing tool

Workflow

Step 1: Scan for Secrets in Client-Side Code

Search JavaScript files, HTML source, and other client-side resources for exposed secrets.

# Download and search JavaScript files for secrets
curl -s "https://target.example.com/" | \
  grep -oP 'src="[^"]*\.js[^"]*"' | \
  grep -oP '"[^"]*"' | tr -d '"' | while read js; do
    echo "=== Scanning: $js ==="
    # Handle relative URLs
    if [[ "$js" == /* ]]; then
      curl -s "https://target.example.com$js"
    else
      curl -s "$js"
    fi | grep -inE \
      "(api[_-]?key|apikey|api[_-]?secret|aws[_-]?access|aws[_-]?secret|private[_-]?key|password|secret|token|auth|credential|AKIA[0-9A-Z]{16})" \
      | head -20
done

# Search for common secret patterns
curl -s "https://target.example.com/static/app.js" | grep -nP \
  "(AIza[0-9A-Za-z-_]{35}|AKIA[0-9A-Z]{16}|sk-[a-zA-Z0-9]{48}|ghp_[a-zA-Z0-9]{36}|xox[bpsa]-[0-9a-zA-Z-]{10,})"

# Check source maps for exposed source code
curl -s "https://target.example.com/static/app.js.map" | head -c 500
# Source maps may contain original source code with embedded secrets

# Search HTML source for exposed data
curl -s "https://target.example.com/" | grep -inE \
  "(api_key|secret|password|token|private_key|database_url|smtp_password)" | head -20

# Check for exposed .env or configuration files
for file in .env .env.local .env.production config.json settings.json \
  .aws/credentials .docker/config.json; do
  status=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
    "https://target.example.com/$file")
  if [ "$status" == "200" ]; then
    echo "FOUND: $file ($status)"
  fi
done

Step 2: Analyze API Responses for Data Over-Exposure

Check if API endpoints return more data than necessary.

# Fetch user profile and examine response fields
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://target.example.com/api/users/me" | jq .

# Look for sensitive fields that should not be exposed:
# - password, password_hash, password_salt
# - ssn, social_security_number, national_id
# - credit_card_number, card_cvv, card_expiry
# - api_key, secret_key, access_token, refresh_token
# - internal_id, database_id
# - ip_address, session_id
# - date_of_birth, drivers_license

# Check list endpoints for excessive data
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://target.example.com/api/users" | jq '.[0] | keys'

# Compare public vs authenticated responses
echo "=== Public ==="
curl -s "https://target.example.com/api/users/1" | jq 'keys'
echo "=== Authenticated ==="
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://target.example.com/api/users/1" | jq 'keys'

# Check error responses for information leakage
curl -s -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"invalid": "data"}' \
  "https://target.example.com/api/users" | jq .
# Look for: stack traces, database queries, internal paths, version info

# Test for PII in search/autocomplete responses
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://target.example.com/api/search?q=john" | jq .
# May return full user records instead of just names

Step 3: Test Data Transmission Security

Verify that sensitive data is encrypted during transmission.

# Check TLS configuration
# Using testssl.sh
./testssl.sh "https://target.example.com"

# Quick TLS checks with curl
curl -s -v "https://target.example.com/" 2>&1 | grep -E "(SSL|TLS|cipher|subject)"

# Check for HTTP (non-HTTPS) endpoints

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