AutoGPT logged API keys in plaintext — why your secrets deserve better

AutoGPT logged API keys in plaintext — why your secrets deserve better than a developer’s console

Here’s a sobering little tale from the land of clever automation: AutoGPT’s Stagehand integration blocks were found logging API keys and authentication secrets in plaintext to logger.info(), exposing them wherever logs roamed — developer machines, CI artefacts, backups or any monitoring pipeline that wasn’t explicitly sanitising output.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-22038, affected StagehandObserveBlock, StagehandActBlock and StagehandExtractBlock prior to autogpt-platform-beta-v0.6.46, and has been patched in that release. Severity was scored as 8.1 (HIGH). The factual bit to remember: the code explicitly called api_key.get_secret_value() and then printed the result. That’s not a design flaw so much as a confidence trick played on secrets.

Why this matters for organisations

Plaintext secrets in logs are like leaving a drawer of labelled keys under the doormat. An attacker who can access those logs — whether via a compromised developer workstation, misconfigured logging service, or a breached CI system — can reuse keys to call APIs, escalate access, spin up resources, exfiltrate data or impersonate your services.

From a business perspective this raises real risks: unauthorised access to customer data, surprise cloud bills, broken integrations, contractual breaches and regulatory headaches. Regulators and auditors will ask uncomfortable questions about secret management, secure development practices and how long you retained evidence of the mistake in unredacted form.

What could happen if you treat logs as free-for-all

Ignore this and you open a chain of escalating problems. An exposed API key might be used quietly for reconnaissance, then traded or chained into further access. Logs often survive longer than temporary credentials, so secrets can be harvested months after the initial mistake. Recovering from a cascade of misused keys can cost far more than the five minutes it would have taken to redact them.

Think of backups and log archives as the unattended attic where secrets hide — you wouldn’t put cash in a shoe box and forget about it, so don’t treat logs that way either. And if you discover leaked keys only after an attacker has used them, incident response and forensic work will eat leadership time, legal budgets and reputation in equal measure.

How recognised standards and good practice help

This sort of error is exactly why an ISO 27001 information security management system matters. ISO 27001 drives disciplined asset and control identification, including how secrets and logs are handled, and ensures that code reviews, secure development rules and supplier checks are not optional suggestions tucked into a README.

For keeping the business operating while you fix the mess, ISO 22301 business continuity planning helps you maintain services and communication channels when credentials or integrations fail. And for practical baseline controls — the kind you can implement quickly — look to Cyber Essentials and IASME certifications to harden your perimeter and reduce common misconfigurations.

Practical, immediate actions (do these today)

• Apply the patch: update AutoGPT to autogpt-platform-beta-v0.6.46 or later where the plaintext logging was removed.

• Rotate any exposed keys immediately and treat the old keys as compromised until proven otherwise.

• Audit logs and archives for leaked secrets — include CI logs, S3 buckets, monitoring dashboards and any off-site backups — and securely purge where appropriate.

• Introduce or enforce logging policies that redact secrets at source and ban logging of sensitive return values such as api_key.get_secret_value().

• Adopt a secrets management solution (vaults, parameter stores) and enforce short-lived tokens and least privilege for API keys.

• Harden developer and CI environments: restrict who can view logs, use role-based access control and enable MFA everywhere.

• Embed secure development and code review practices to catch this class of error before merge — static analysis and pre-commit hooks can spot obvious secret-loggers.

Longer-term controls and governance

Embed secret-handling rules into your risk assessments and supplier management processes as required by ISO 27001. Require vendors and open-source dependencies to document their secret-handling behaviour, and include secure coding checks in procurement and supplier assurance.

Use security awareness training such as usecure to ensure developers and ops teams understand the operational consequences of careless logging. Where software is business-critical, operationalise security testing and dependency scans so a bad release doesn’t become an enterprise incident.

Incident response and continuity — don’t trust the parachute you’ve never opened

If you find exposed credentials, trigger your incident response playbook: contain and rotate, investigate scope, notify affected parties where required, and record lessons learned. If you don’t have a tested incident response or continuity plan, now is a good time to treat that as an urgent project and consider help from advisers who combine technical fixes with governance improvements.

Synergos’ consultancy and support packages can help map these fixes back to formal systems like ISO 27001 and ISO 22301, turning one-off firefighting into lasting resilience — with supplier checks, secure development guidance and tested continuity plans so you’re not improvising when the next automated agent gets overenthusiastic with secrets.

Yes, it’s tempting to believe “that’ll never happen to us”. But automation tools and AI agents are increasingly integrated into production flows, which means mistakes at the library or platform level are your problem the moment you rely on them.

Takeaway: patch, rotate, audit and bake secret-handling into your management systems — and if you need help turning technical fixes into organisational change, you know where to start.