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Medium

CISA Contractor Nightwing Exposed Sensitive Government Credentials on Public GitHub

A public GitHub repository named 'Private-CISA', maintained by a contractor from Nightwing, a government defense contractor, was found to have exposed highly sensitive internal credentials and systems used by the US…

Key points

  • Public GitHub repository 'Private-CISA' maintained by a Nightwing contractor.
  • Exposed 844 MB of CISA's internal DevSecOps infrastructure.
  • Included AWS GovCloud credentials, plaintext passwords, SSH keys, RSA private key.

Connected intelligence

Signal brief

Follow the organization, likely method and potential impact to explore connected Shadow Tier intelligence.

02

Likely method

Internal actor · Confidentiality impact

Possible insider activity

03

Potential impact

Potential data exposure

Confidentiality

Published
May 29, 2026
Updated
Jun 24, 2026
Confidence
Medium
Evidence
2 sources

Structured assessment

Signal analysis

This analysis groups the signal by industry, likely incident action and impacted security area. It helps compare this signal with other published signals without treating the labels as final determinations.

Threat source

Possible insider activity

Watch exposure paths that could affect data, operations or third-party trust.

  • Source type: possible insider or internal misuse

Business impact

Potential data exposure
Impact area
Confidentiality
Likely asset
User or customer data, Server or cloud data store

Mentioned entities

NightwingData DisclosureCISA Contractor Nightwing Exposed SensitiveGovernment CredentialsPublic GitHub AGitHubPrivate-CISANightwingAgencyCISA

Quick context

Questions about this signal

What happened in this signal?

A public GitHub repository named 'Private-CISA', maintained by a contractor from Nightwing, a government defense contractor, was found to have exposed highly sensitive internal credentials and systems used by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The repository, publicly accessible from November 13, 2025, until May 18, 2026, contained 844 MB of CISA's internal DevSecOps infrastructure, including administrative credentials for AWS GovCloud accounts, plaintext usernames and passwords for internal CISA systems, SSH keys, and an RSA private key. The contractor reportedly disabled GitHub's default secret-scanning push protections. Public reporting and analysis of the exposure occurred around May 18-29, 2026.

When was this signal reported?

Shadow Tier lists May 29, 2026 as the signal date.

Which organization is connected to this signal?

Nightwing is the organization connected to this public signal.

Explore Nightwing