Generic Database Credentials in URL

Name: Generic Database Credentials in URL
Creator: TestPattern Community
License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Detects Generic Database Credentials in URL patterns. Matches user:password@host in any protocol URL

Type: regex
Engine: universal
Confidence: high
Confidence justification: High confidence: structurally constrained pattern with corroborative keyword support reduces false positive rates significantly. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.
Jurisdictions: global
Regulations: Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth)
Frameworks: CIS Controls, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, PCI-DSS, SOC 2
Data categories: credentials, security
Scope: wide
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Compatible, Netskope: Compatible

Pattern

[a-zA-Z]+://[^/:@]+:[^/:@]+@\s{1,100}

Corroborative evidence keywords

api key, api_key, apikey, access key, secret key, private key, auth token, authorization, access token, bearer, conn str, connection string, connectionstring, cookie, credential, database, host, JWT, oauth, passphrase (+37 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

amqp://user:password@broker.example.com — AMQP connection with credentials
ldap://admin:secret@ldap.internal.com — LDAP connection with credentials
ftp://deploy:p@ssw0rd@ftp.example.com/uploads — FTP with embedded credentials

Should not match

https://example.com/path — URL without credentials (no user:pass@ section)
mysql://localhost/mydb — Database URL without credentials
template example placeholder record identifier — Template/sample context should be excluded even when anchor words are present

Known false positives

Authentication-related terminology in software documentation, security training materials, or system architecture descriptions without actual credentials. Mitigation: Require proximity to credential-specific patterns (API keys, connection strings, tokens) rather than general security terminology.
Code snippets and configuration examples containing credential-related keywords or placeholder values in developer documentation. Mitigation: Check for common placeholder patterns (example.com, localhost, 0000) and documentation file types to reduce false positives from technical writing.