bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/security/do-not-put-credentials-in-urls.md
Jesper Schulz-Wedde 62dabf9a11 Co-locate AL samples next to their knowledge articles
The /samples/ top-level tree is replaced with sibling files in each
knowledge-layer folder. An article and its demonstrations now live
side-by-side:

  microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.md
  microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.good.al
  microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.bad.al

Rationale:
- Proximity. An article and its paired samples are one unit; the
  filesystem now reflects that.
- Layer ownership. Samples inherit layer precedence for free -- a
  /custom/ fork can override an article and its samples atomically,
  which the shared /samples/ tree previously made awkward.
- Trivial migration path. Action-skill source globs
  (*/knowledge/<domain>/**/*.md) are unchanged; sample discovery is a
  sibling-filename lookup.

Changes:
- git mv of all 65 sample files from samples/<domain>/<slug>/{bad,good}.al
  to microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.{bad,good}.al (history preserved).
- Update See-sample references in all 37 articles that ship samples.
- skills/read.md: replace the no-code-blocks bullet with a pointer to a
  new Sample files section that fully specifies the sibling convention,
  the kinds (good/bad + forward-compatible), multi-technology rules,
  demonstration-only status, and layer-precedence behaviour.
- skills/write.md: update the samples pointer to match.
- README.md: annotate the knowledge tree with the sample sibling shape.
- samples/README.md deleted; content lifted into skills/read.md.
- Both generators (C:\temp\gen_performance_knowledge.py,
  C:\temp\gen_security_knowledge.py) updated to emit at the new paths
  and to stop writing samples/README.md. Re-running them is idempotent
  against the committed layout.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-04-17 13:45:33 +02:00

1.3 KiB

bc-version domain keywords technologies countries application-area
26..28
security
url
query-string
credentials
logging
al
w1
all

Do not put credentials in URLs

Seed article. Converted from an existing security-review prompt to bootstrap the BCQuality security corpus. Domain stewards should expand, restructure, and refine as needed.

Description

URL query strings and path segments are routinely captured in web-server access logs, browser history, proxy logs, platform telemetry, and exception traces. A credential placed anywhere in the URL therefore persists across systems the extension does not control, and is typically retained far longer than the secret's intended lifetime.

Best Practice

Transport credentials in Authorization headers, carried as SecretText end-to-end (see use-secrettext-with-httpclient). Where the URI itself must carry a secret (for example, a pre-signed URL), build it with SecretStrSubstNo and pass it via SetSecretRequestUri so it is never materialized as Text.

See sample: do-not-put-credentials-in-urls.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Appending '?api_key=' + Key to a request URL, or embedding a token in a path segment, then calling HttpClient.Get with the resulting Text URL.

See sample: do-not-put-credentials-in-urls.bad.al.