IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

OpenCode Hacked: User credentials leaked

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Theme 1: Security breach and exposure of API keys

"We identified unauthorized access to a legacy system … Third party provider keys (eg OpenAI, Anthropic) saved in your workspace may have been exposed. Please revoke and replace those keys through the relevant provider’s dashboard…" – pranshuchittora
"Turns out even if you used credentials locally, you could've have been impacted as the .env files were also consumed by the agents." – neya

Theme 2: Lack of transparency and suspicion of ignored warnings

"I told you so: … Beware of the author of tweet, who happens to be author of OpenCode - OpenCode will leak all your data to themselves and to shady 3rd parties." – bewareofscams
"It triggers me when these companies think that users are fool. I would have appreciated them, if they have disclosed things more transparently." – pranshuchittora
"Why are the comments pointing out there were warning signs early on being downvoted/flagged?" – preommr

Theme 3: Technical speculation on how the exposure occurred

"But isn’t OpenCode open source why does it need credentials." – vinni2
"For the inference APIs, which need to bill users. It's unclear why OpenCode's servers (presumably) had access to the API credentials." – progval
"I’m a bit confused by the wording here, does it mean the credentials were hacked and then used to perform a mass distillation campaign?" – fleshers
"mass distillation campaign there's no public evidence of this." – ipsum2

🚀 Project Ideas

KeyVault for LLMs

Summary

  • Zero‑knowledge, end‑to‑end encrypted vault for storing LLM provider API keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) that integrates with existing workflows via SDK or environment‑variable injection.
  • Core value proposition: eliminates the need to trust a hosted console with raw keys while providing audit‑ready rotation and revocation capabilities.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers and teams using LLM APIs who want to avoid storing raw keys in third‑party consoles
Core Feature Client‑side encrypted storage with CLI/SDK to fetch decrypted keys at runtime; supports automatic key rotation and revocation logs
Tech Stack Go (backend), libsodium for encryption, PostgreSQL for metadata, WebAssembly UI, Docker/Kubernetes deployment
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: tiered SaaS (free individual, $15/user/mo team)

Notes

  • HN commenters complained that OpenCode stored their keys in an opaque backend and lacked a clear privacy policy; a self‑hosted or zero‑knowledge vault directly addresses that trust gap.
  • Provides a concrete alternative to the OpenCode Console that can be audited, satisfying the demand for transparency and control.

LeakWatch – Automated API‑Key Leak Detector & Revocator

Summary

  • Continuously scans public code repositories, package registries, and log services for patterns of LLM API keys and, where providers support it, automatically issues revocation requests; otherwise sends real‑time alerts.
  • Core value proposition: reduces the window of exposure after a key leak, turning a reactive scramble into an automated response.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Security engineers, DevOps teams, and individual developers who commit code publicly or use CI pipelines
Core Feature Real‑time scanning of GitHub/GitLab/npm/DockerHub for OpenAI/Anthropic/etc. keys, automated revocation via provider APIs, Slack/email/webhook alerts
Tech Stack Python scanner, GitHub Actions/AWS Lambda triggers, Redis for deduplication, provider‑specific revocation endpoints, Prometheus metrics
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: $0.01 per scanned repo‑day, with free tier for open‑source projects

Notes

  • Several HN users noted that leaked keys could be used for mass distillation and wished for a way to invalidate them quickly; LeakWatch offers that capability.
  • The tool can be discussed openly on HN as a proactive security measure, encouraging better hygiene around API‑key storage.

ZeroTrust LLM Proxy

Summary

  • A lightweight, self‑hosted proxy that never stores long‑lived provider keys; instead it derives short‑ lived, per‑request tokens from a master secret using HMAC, forwards requests to LLMs, and enforces usage quotas and logging.
  • Core value proposition: removes the risk of key exposure from any intermediate service while keeping the developer experience unchanged.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers using hosted LLM consoles or CI/CD pipelines who fear key leakage
Core Feature Accepts a long‑lived master key, generates time‑bound sub‑tokens for each LLM call, proxies to provider, logs metadata, supports rate limiting
Tech Stack Go (HTTP server), HMAC‑SHA256 for token derivation, Redis for rate‑limit counters, optional Envoy sidecar for observability
Difficulty Low‑Medium
Monetization Hobby (MIT‑licensed open source) – optional hosted support plan at $9/mo

Notes

  • Commenters lamented that OpenCode required them to hand over raw API keys to a hosted service with no clear storage guarantees; this proxy eliminates that trust requirement entirely.
  • Offers a practical utility that can be self‑audited, aligning with the HN community's preference for transparent, verifiable tooling.

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