5 Things Hackers Steal From Regular Pastebins

Every minute, thousands of people paste sensitive data into services that store it in plain text. Most don’t think twice about it.

Hackers know this. And they’ve built automated systems to exploit it.

Here are the 5 things they’re actively hunting for:

1. API Keys and Access Tokens

This is the jackpot. AWS keys, Stripe secrets, GitHub tokens—developers paste these constantly while debugging or sharing with teammates.

How it happens: Developer needs to share a config file. Removes the “obvious” secrets but misses one. Pastes it. Bot finds it 3 minutes later.

2. Database Connection Strings

mongodb://user:password@host:27017/production

That’s a direct line into someone’s database. And yes, people paste these all the time when asking for help in forums or sharing configs.

3. SSH Keys and Certificates

Private SSH keys are literal keys to servers. Once an attacker has your private key, they can log into your server as you.

People paste these when:

• Sharing access with contractors
• Debugging server issues
• Setting up deployment pipelines

4. Session Cookies and Auth Tokens

That random string in your browser’s cookies? It’s probably your entire identity on a website. Paste it somewhere public, and anyone can become you.

Common scenario: Someone shares a “harmless” HTTP request for debugging. Hidden in the headers: their active session token.

5. Personal Data Dumps

Credit card numbers, passwords, social security numbers—you’d be shocked what ends up on pastebins.

Sometimes it’s hackers sharing stolen data. But often it’s regular people:

• Sharing passwords with family
• Sending account details to support
• “Temporarily” storing login credentials

How hackers find this stuff

It’s not manual searching. Automated bots continuously:

1. Scrape new pastes in real-time from public pastebins
2. Pattern match for things that look like credentials
3. Test validity by attempting to use found credentials
4. Alert attackers when they hit gold

This happens 24/7. The window between “I pasted this” and “someone found it” can be minutes.

What you should do instead

For sensitive credentials:

• Use a password manager with secure sharing
• Use zero-knowledge services like CloakBin with password protection
• Never paste secrets in plain text—anywhere

For code snippets:

• Redact ALL credentials, not just obvious ones
• Use environment variables, share the pattern not the values
• Double-check before hitting paste

How to actually share securely

“Use encryption” sounds nice, but how do you share an encrypted link without just… sending the key in the same message?

The link alone is useless. The password alone is useless. You need both—and they travel separately.

The bottom line

Regular pastebins are hunting grounds. With 87,000+ MongoDB instances breached and 796 npm packages compromised in the last two months alone, the threat is immediate.

The solution isn’t to stop sharing—it’s to share smarter. Zero-knowledge encryption with password protection should be the default, not the exception.