CircleCI Personal Access Token

Name: CircleCI Personal Access Token
Creator: TestPattern Community
License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Detects CircleCI personal access tokens (CCIPAT_ prefix). These tokens authenticate to the CircleCI API and can read/modify pipelines, contexts and project settings; a leak enables CI/CD compromise.

Type: regex
Engine: universal
Confidence: high
Confidence justification: High confidence: the distinctive CCIPAT_ prefix combined with the base58_hex two-segment structure makes false positives extremely unlikely.
Jurisdictions: global
Regulations: Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Computer Misuse Act 1990
Frameworks: CIS Controls, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, SOC 2
Data categories: credentials, security
Scope: narrow
Risk rating: 8
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Unsupported, Macie: Unsupported, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Unsupported, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?<![A-Za-z0-9_])CCIPAT_[A-Za-z0-9]{20,24}_[0-9a-f]{40}(?![A-Za-z0-9])

Corroborative evidence keywords

circleci, circle ci, personal access token, CIRCLE_TOKEN, api token, CI/CD

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

CCIPAT_ULUhR6rJLxYbyzyrP19iMZ_8fb1e3510325f7f09361de22b9420346c53ca2cb — Exact 65 probe - segmented PAT without independent CircleCI context
CircleCI pipeline credential CCIPAT_zZyYxXwWvVuU0123456789_deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeef — Exact 75 probe - PAT with CircleCI pipeline context
CircleCI API secret CIRCLE_TOKEN=CCIPAT_ABCDEFGHIJ1234567890ab_0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef01234567 — Exact 85 probe - API context plus canonical CircleCI token assignment

Should not match

CCIPAT_short_0123456789abcdef — Hex segment too short to be a CircleCI PAT
CCIPRJ_ULUhR6rJLxYbyzyrP19iMZ_8fb1e3510325f7f09361de22b9420346c53ca2cb — Project token prefix (CCIPRJ_), not a personal access token
GITHUB_TOKEN=CCIPAT_ULUhR6rJLxYbyzyrP19iMZ_8fb1e3510325f7f09361de22b9420346c53ca2cb — Sibling CI provider label does not corroborate a CircleCI PAT
Documentation example: CircleCI API CIRCLE_TOKEN=CCIPAT_ULUhR6rJLxYbyzyrP19iMZ_8fb1e3510325f7f09361de22b9420346c53ca2cb — Documentation example containing a valid-shaped PAT is excluded
generate a circleci personal access token in user settings — Prose mention without a token value

Known false positives

Documentation or examples showing placeholder CCIPAT_ strings. Mitigation: Require corroborative CircleCI keywords and exclude placeholder markers.

References

Collections

Cloud Credentials & API Keys