rk_live_ restricted keys in bundles — scoped, not safe
rk_ keys carry only granted permissions — which may include charges or refunds. Audit scope after any exposure. Free scan.
Restricted keys are Stripe’s least-privilege tool — excellent design that becomes irrelevant the moment the key leaves the server, because scope still permits whatever you granted.
Inventory-before-rotation is this page’s core idea.
What a Stripe restricted key is
rk_live_ keys carry explicit permission sets chosen at creation — read-only dashboards, charges-only writers, refunds-only ops tools.
rk_live_FAKE000000000000000000000The prefix is the claim: scanners and attackers alike identify the format before they know anything else about it, which is why recognition starts at the first characters rather than the last.
What it grants
Severity depends entirely on granted permissions:
- Charges if payment-writing scopes were enabled.
- PII reads if customer scopes present.
- Nothing dangerous if truly read-only metadata — rare in practice.
How it ends up in a bundle
Three arrival routes cover nearly every case we see:
- Ops tooling embedded in admin UIs client-side.
- Dashboard widgets calling Stripe directly.
- Copied integration snippets using whatever key was handy.
Does it belong in a browser?
Server-only, like all live-mode keys; restriction limits damage, never publication.
Rotate it
Before revoking: screenshot permissions (audit value); then create replacement with identical scope, swap consumers, revoke.
Find it in seconds
Open DevTools on the deployed site and search the built assets for rk_live_. If the search hits, the credential shipped; if it does not, check the chunks loaded on authenticated or interactive views, not just the landing page — the calling code often sits behind a route.
The faster path is to let a machine do the fetching. KeyDrift downloads the same JavaScript a visitor gets — HTML, every referenced chunk including ones named only in the route manifest, and the server-streamed data frameworks inline into the document — and reports credentials with a masked prefix, a fingerprint, and the exact file they live in. Paste your deployed URL into the scanner; no account needed.
Make sure it stays gone
It bears saying because it happens constantly: the fix holds until the next prompt that needs the query to return rows. Drift monitoring exists for precisely this — it diffs consecutive scans and pages you when a previously resolved finding reappears, naming the regression as a regression rather than repeating the first alert.
Why this keeps happening industry-wide
It helps to name the economics honestly. Fixing this class of leak costs minutes when caught at deploy time and days when caught at invoice time, because by then the credential has been harvested, validated, resold or drained — often all four. Detection latency is the entire game, which is why the monitoring half of KeyDrift exists alongside the scanning half.
How KeyDrift reports this exact finding
When KeyDrift finds this on your deployment, the report shows a masked value (first 8 and last 4 characters only), a salted fingerprint for tracking, the exact chunk filename carrying it, and a severity with written rationale. Public-by-design neighbours — anon keys, publishable keys, Firebase web constants — appear as informational context rather than noise, because knowing what should be there is what makes the real findings credible.
Manual check, step by step
A five-minute version you can run anywhere: view-source on the landing page, copy every src= script URL, fetch each and search the results for rk_live_. It misses manifest-only chunks and streamed payloads — which is precisely the gap between "I checked" and "it is clean" — but it catches the loud majority and builds the pattern-recognition that makes scanner output legible.
Close the loop with monitoring
Monitoring closes the loop that one-time verification leaves open. A scheduled scan refetches everything, diffs against history, and fires only on transitions: created, regressed, resolved. Regression alerts matter most here — they fire when a previously fixed finding returns, which in agent-era codebases is less a possibility than a schedule.
Common questions
Why high not critical severity?
Calibration: potential harm bounded by unknown-but-real scope; treat seriously regardless.
Good practice overall?
Yes — pair restricted keys with server-only usage and scanning as verification.
Run a free scan at keydrift.dev/scan — paste a URL or the bundle source itself, no account. Findings arrive masked, with the exact chunk they live in.