Mr. Nice Try Notes from the edge

New record The AI key heist

Bots went hunting for AI keys 7,135 times.

Most wanted: Anthropic keys. They checked 81 hiding spots, from /.env.openai to /.claude/settings.json.

Monday, Oct 12, 2026 (UTC) · see the latest

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The AI Key Heist: Bots went hunting for AI keys 7,135 times.

7,135

AI key hunts

▲ +90% vs the day before

94

hunters

▲ +96% vs the day before

81

hiding spots

▲ +224% vs the day before

1.6%

of all probes

Whose keys they want requests
Anthropic 4,572
OpenAI 1,518
MCP & agent configs 584
Google Gemini 229
xAI 102
↳ Keep your keys out of your web root.

Every edition: AI key hunts

Oct 7 Oct 12

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 1,463 43
/.claude/settings.json Anthropic 1,442 41
/.claude/settings.local.json Anthropic 1,440 40
/.env.anthropic Anthropic 1,429 39
/xai.json xAI 98 2
/.cache/huggingface/token Hugging Face 65 31
/mcp.json MCP & agent configs 65 4
/.cursor/mcp.json MCP & agent configs 59 5
/CLAUDE.md Anthropic 52 6
/.github/copilot-instructions.md MCP & agent configs 51 6
/AGENTS.md MCP & agent configs 51 6
/.claude/mcp.json Anthropic 44 2
/.cursor/settings.json MCP & agent configs 44 2
/.codex/mcp.json MCP & agent configs 37 2
/.gemini/mcp.json Google Gemini 37 2
/.cursor/credentials.json MCP & agent configs 34 1
/.cursor/auth.json MCP & agent configs 34 1
/.config/gemini/credentials.json Google Gemini 34 1
/.continue/.env MCP & agent configs 34 1
/.env.gemini Google Gemini 33 3
/.env.langsmith LangChain 32 1
/langsmith.json LangChain 32 1
/sign/a20a2ddd-49fd-4df5-864c-a0c388e62db5/a2f6ab95-6d57-4639-a3bf-eb0704badab7/waiting-room/an333eLZtvnLptODsJCQomcpzwUxZKQshfMO4ln27PWWYCSu/heartbeat MCP & agent configs 27 1
/.gemini/settings.json Google Gemini 24 3
/.gemini/auth.json Google Gemini 19 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.

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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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