Intellectual property leaks via employees: the offboarding risk
How private repositories end up on public GitHub, GitLab or pastebins after terminations.
Audience: SaaS Platforms · Risk level: CRITICAL
Blindfy Intelligence Unit · Technical review by Blindfy
Scenario
After a developer is let go, excerpts of the platform's source code appear in public GitHub repositories or Pastebin snippets, exposing API secrets and business logic.
How the scam works
Without immediate revocation of Git, AWS and password manager access, the former employee (or whoever inherited the laptop) pushes to a personal repository or shares snippets in technical forums.
Common mistake
Believing a signed NDA is enough, without technically checking what was actually accessed in the last 30 days.
Impact
Competitors copying features, exploitation of exposed vulnerabilities and breach of contracts with enterprise customers.
What works
A standardized technical offboarding process, continuous secret scanning and OSINT monitoring by product name.
Protection checklist
- Revoke access on the same day as the termination
- Rotate exposed secrets and tokens
- Run secret scanning on public GitHub
- Monitor Pastebin and GitHub Gists for company strings
- Audit download and clone logs from recent weeks
- Initiate DMCA takedown where applicable
- Formalize a parallel legal track
Editorial sources
- ANPD — Comunicação de incidente de segurança
- CERT.br / NIC.br — Cartilha de Segurança para Internet
- ENCCLA / Ministério da Justiça — Enfrentamento a golpes digitais
Your biggest risk vector walks around the office. Treat offboarding as a security event.
