"My little birds are everywhere, even in the North, they whisper to me the strangest stories." - Varys

Whispers is an information security analysis tool designed for identifying hardcoded secrets in structured text and static code (CWE-798). Whispers can be used as a standalone binary, or as a Python module, which is meant to facilitate its usage individually, and in automated processes and pipelines at scale.

• 📋 Release notes
• ⚙️ Request a feature
• 🐞 Report a bug

• ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64
• Mach-O 64-bit x86_64 executable
• PE32+ executable (console) x86-64

pip3 install whispers

• 📋 Structured text coverage for JSON, YAML, XML, and many other formats
• 📋 Static code coverage for Python, PHP, Java/Scala/Kotlin, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, and many other languages
• 🛠️ Contribute by submitting format samples!

• Passwords
• API tokens
• Cloud keys
• Private keys
• Hashed credentials
• Authentication tokens
• Webhooks
• Sensitive files
• See all rules
• See all fixtures

# General usage & help
whispers

# More information about Whispers
whispers --info

# Show installed version
whispers --version

# Check structured text
whispers dir/or/file

# Check structured text and static code
whispers -a dir/or/file

# Write JSON results to a file instead of the screen
whispers dir/or/file -o /tmp/secrets.json

# Pipe JSON results downstream
whispers dir/or/file | jq '.[].value'

# Custom usage:
#   - only check 'keys' rule group
#   - with Critical or High severity
#   - everywhere in target/dir except for .log & .raw files (regex)
whispers -g keys -s Critical,High -F '.*\.(log|raw)' target/dir

# Configuration file template
whispers --init > config.yml

# Provide custom configuration file
whispers --config config.yml dir/or/file

# Return custom system code on success
whispers --exitcode 7 dir/or/file

# Include only 'aws-id' & 'aws-secret' rule IDs
whispers --rules aws-id,aws-secret dir/or/file

# Exclude 'file-known' rule ID
whispers --xrules file-known dir/or/file

# Include only 'keys' & 'misc' rule groups
whispers --groups keys,misc dir/or/file

# Exclude 'files' rule group
whispers --xgroups files dir/or/file

# Include only Critical & High severity
whispers --severity Critical,High dir/or/file

# Exclude all Low severity
whispers --xseverity Low dir/or/file

# Include only .json & .yml files (globs)
whispers --files '*.json,*.yml' dir/or/file

# Exclude .log & .cfg files (regex)
whispers --xfiles '.*\.(log|cfg)' dir/or/file

import whispers

args = "-c whispers/config.yml -R file-known -S Info tests/fixtures"

for secret in whispers.secrets(args):
  print(f"[{secret.file}:{secret.line}] {secret.key} = {secret.value}")

make build-image

# Test
docker run -v $(pwd)/tests/fixtures:/src whispers -F None /src
docker run -v $(pwd)/tests/fixtures:/src whispers --ast -F None /src

# Test with custom config
docker run \
  --volume $(pwd)/tests/fixtures:/src \
  --volume $(pwd)/tests/configs/integration.yml:/config.yml \
  whispers -c /config.yml /src

There are several configuration options available in Whispers. It’s possible to include and exclude results based on file path, keys, values, individual or grouped rules, and severity levels. There is a default configuration file that will be used if you don't specify a custom one.

Note: all keys and static values are always included, and then filtered out based on config and rules.

• File path specifications are lists of globs
• Key and value specifications are lists of regular expressions
• Rule specifications are lists of rule IDs or inline rule definitions
• Everything else is a list of strings

Exclude all log files:

exclude:
  files:
    - .*\.log

Only scan for High level findings in .npmrc files, excluding a known testing value:

include:
  files:
    - "**/*.npmrc"
  severity:
    - High

exclude:
  values: 
    - ^token_for_testing$

See whispers/models/appconfig.py for available fields and their defaults.

ast: false

include:
  files:
    - "**/*.yml"  # glob
  rules:
    - password
    - uri
    - id: starks  # inline rule
      message: Whispers from the North
      severity: Critical
      value:
        regex: (Aria|Ned) Stark
        ignorecase: True
  groups:
    - keys
  severity:
    - Critical
    - High
    - Medium

exclude:
  files:
    - .*/tests?/  # regex
  keys:
    - ^foo        # regex
  values:
    - bar$        # regex
  rules:
    - apikey-known

The fastest way to tweak detection in a repeatable way (ie: remove false positives and unwanted results) is to copy the default config.yml into a new file, adapt it, and pass it as an argument to Whispers, for example:

whispers --init > custom.yml
# edit custom.yml as needed
whispers -c custom.yml target

Simple filtering based on rules and severity can also be done with CLI arguments directly, without having to provide a config file. See whispers --info for details.

Rules specify the actual things that should be pulled out from key-value pairs. There are several common ones that come built-in, such as AWS keys and passwords, but the tool is made to be easily expandable with new rules.

• Custom rules can be defined in the main config file under rules: key
• Custom rules can be added to whispers/rules directory

See whispers/models/rule.py for available fields and their defaults.

- id: rule-id                 # unique rule name
  group: rule-group           # rule group name
  description: Values formatted like AWS Session Token
  message: AWS Session Token  # report will show this message
  severity: Critical           # one of Critical, High, Medium, Low, Info

  key:                        # specify key format
    regex: (aws.?session.?token)?
    ignorecase: True          # case-insensitive matching

  value:                      # specify value format
    regex: ^(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])[A-Za-z0-9\+\/]{270,450}$
    ignorecase: False         # case-sensitive matching
    minlen: 270               # value is at least this long
    isBase64: True            # value is base64-encoded
    isAscii: False            # value is binary data when decoded
    isUri: False              # value is not formatted like a URI
    isFile: False             # value doesn't match filenames

  similar: 0.35               # maximum allowed Jaro-Winkler similarity
                              # between key and value (1.0 being exactly the same)

All parsing functionality is implemented via plugins. Each plugin implements a class with the pairs() method that runs through files and yields KeyValuePair objects to be checked with rules.

from pathlib import Path
from whispers.models.pair import KeyValuePair

class PluginName:
  def pairs(self, filepath: Path) -> Iterator[KeyValuePair]:
    yield KeyValuePair(
      "key",
      "value",
      keypath=["path", "to", "key"],
      file=filepath.as_posix()
    )

git clone https://github.com/adeptex/whispers
cd whispers
make install-dev
make format test

BSD 3-Clause License