Plaintext passwords

Identifies plaintext passwords patterns in security and access control contexts. Detects potential exposure of sensitive security information in international systems.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: low
Confidence justification: Low confidence marker: phrase-based artifact detection to bootstrap line-by-line coverage. Requires corroborative evidence and later hardening to high-confidence structural patterns. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.
Detection quality: Mixed
Jurisdictions: global
Regulations: GDPR
Data categories: credentials, security
Scope: wide
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Compatible, Netskope: Compatible

Pattern

\bplaintext\s+passwords\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

plaintext passwords, plaintext, passwords, credentials, keys, secrets, api key, api_key, apikey, access key, access token, auth token, authorization, bearer, conn str, connection string, connectionstring, cookie, credential, database (+43 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Plaintext passwords — Exact phrase marker match
plaintext passwords — Case-insensitive phrase match
Plaintext passwords — Normalized whitespace phrase

Should not match

unrelated generic text — No relevant phrase context
placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match phrase marker
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.