Mr. Nice Try Notes from the edge

New record The AI key heist

Bots went hunting for AI keys 3,754 times.

Most wanted: Anthropic keys. They checked 25 hiding spots, from /.env.openai to /.env.anthropic.

Sunday, Oct 11, 2026 (UTC) · see the latest

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The AI Key Heist: Bots went hunting for AI keys 3,754 times.

3,754

AI key hunts

▲ +77% vs the day before

48

hunters

▲ +33% vs the day before

25

hiding spots

▼ -11% vs the day before

3.0%

of all probes

Whose keys they want requests
Anthropic 2,666
OpenAI 912
MCP & agent configs 145
Google Gemini 31
↳ Keep your keys out of your web root.

Every edition: AI key hunts

Oct 7 Oct 11

How I 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 edge during the UTC day.

Where they looked

The paths scanners tried, most-requested first.

Path Provider Requests Scanners
/.env.openai OpenAI 880 38
/.env.anthropic Anthropic 877 38
/.claude/settings.json Anthropic 877 38
/.claude/settings.local.json Anthropic 877 38
/.cursor/auth.json MCP & agent configs 31 3
/.continue/.env MCP & agent configs 31 3
/.cursor/credentials.json MCP & agent configs 31 3
/.config/gemini/credentials.json Google Gemini 31 3
/AGENTS.md MCP & agent configs 19 5
/CLAUDE.md Anthropic 19 5
/.github/copilot-instructions.md MCP & agent configs 19 5
/.well-known/mcp MCP & agent configs 7 3
/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json MCP & agent configs 7 3
/anthropic/config.json Anthropic 4 2
/.openai/config OpenAI 4 1
/.openai/credentials OpenAI 4 1
/openai.key OpenAI 4 1
/openai-proxy/config.json OpenAI 4 2
/openai-proxy/config.yaml OpenAI 4 2
/openai-proxy/config.yml OpenAI 4 2
/openai-proxy.yaml OpenAI 4 2
/openai-proxy.yml OpenAI 4 2
/.claude/credentials Anthropic 4 1
/.claude/credentials.json Anthropic 4 1
/claude/config.json Anthropic 4 2

Past editions

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

A new one every morning.

Follow @MrNiceTry on X for each day's numbers, and the odd story about what the bots get up to.

More from yesterday

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 Most Wanted: Bots' most wanted file: /.env

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 Speedrun: New sites get scanned in under a minute.

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

 Costume Party: 71% of "browsers" were bots in costume.

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