GitGuardian has detected the following Google API Key exposed within your GitHub account.

Gaurab Roy
2 min readJan 21, 2023

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GitGuardian is a service that scans public GitHub repositories for sensitive information, such as API keys or credentials. If it detects a Google API key exposed within a GitHub account, it means that a user has accidentally committed and pushed a file containing their Google API key to a public repository, potentially allowing anyone to access and use their API key. It is important to immediately revoke the exposed API key and ensure that any sensitive information is not committed to a public repository in the future.

To protect a Google API key when using Flutter, you can follow these steps:

  • Create a new file in your Flutter project called secrets.dart and add the following line to it:
const apiKey = 'YOUR_API_KEY';
  • Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual API key.
  • Add secrets.dart to your .gitignore file to prevent it from being committed to your GitHub repository.
  • When you need to use the API key in your code, import secrets.dart and use the apiKey constant. For example:
import 'secrets.dart';

// ...

String url = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?key=$apiKey&address=1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA';
  • By following the above steps, you can make sure that your API key is not exposed in your GitHub repository and is only used in your local code.

It is also a good practice to use environment variables and use them to assign the value to the apiKey variable. Also, you can use a secrets management tool to store your API keys.

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Gaurab Roy
Gaurab Roy

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