Install noseyparker with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• noseyparker

Project history

The GitHub repository was created on 2022-11-08. Help Net Security reported on 2022-12-14 that Praetorian had open-sourced the regular-expression scanning capabilities of its internal Nosey Parker secret scanning tool.

A 2023-03-03 Show HN post by the project author explained the older internal origin: Nosey Parker was originally created to help build a labeled dataset of secrets for machine-learning work, then proved useful on its own during Praetorian security engagements. The same post says it was reimplemented in Rust, released as open source in late 2022, and presented at Black Hat Arsenal.

The public project evolved from Git-repository scanning toward broader data-source scanning. Praetorian's 2023 blog said it had gained arbitrary file and directory scanning, Docker and firmware image use cases, memory-dump scanning, and simple OSINT enumeration of GitHub organizations and users. The changelog later records SARIF output, extensible enumerators, deduplication, and many new token-specific rules.

Adoption history

Nosey Parker's adoption niche is application security, cloud security, red-team, and SRE workflows that need high-throughput, lower-noise secret discovery. The project had thousands of GitHub stars by 2026-07-01, is packaged by Homebrew and Nix, and has a companion `noseyparker-explorer` TUI for reviewing and annotating findings.

The repository was archived on GitHub on 2026-04-24, making the public repo read-only. That makes the package historically important but also changes its adoption posture: it remains available in package managers, but the upstream public development signal ended at the archive date unless Praetorian publishes a successor elsewhere.

How it is used

Practical use starts with `noseyparker scan` against a directory, local Git repository, remote Git URL, or GitHub user/org. The scan writes a datastore such as `cpython.np`; users then generate reports or inspect findings, with deduplication and rules intended to reduce false positives.

The README example scans CPython Git history and reports throughput over Git blobs. The HN discussion emphasized Hyperscan-backed simultaneous regex matching as a core speed reason, and described Nosey Parker as especially useful where hardcoded credentials in source code, logs, and public repositories lead to real offensive-security findings.

Why package nerds care

Nosey Parker matters because it is a Rust security CLI that treats Git history as first-class input, not just the working tree. It packages secret scanning as a fast local binary with release assets, datastore output, SARIF/reporting paths, GitHub enumeration, and a separate explorer TUI for triage.

Timeline

• 2022-11-08: GitHub repository created.
• 2022-12-14: Praetorian open-source announcement covered by Help Net Security.
• 2023-03-03: Show HN post described the Rust rewrite, open-source release, and Black Hat Arsenal presentation.
• 2025-05-08: v0.24.0 release published.
• 2026-04-24: GitHub repository archived and made read-only.

Related projects

• Related projects include noseyparker-explorer, Hyperscan, GitHub code search, trufflehog, Gitleaks, detect-secrets, and platform secret-scanning systems.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/praetorian-inc/noseyparker
• https://api.github.com/repos/praetorian-inc/noseyparker/releases?per_page=10
• https://formulae.brew.sh/api/formula/noseyparker.json
• https://github.com/praetorian-inc/noseyparker
• https://github.com/praetorian-inc/noseyparker-explorer
• https://github.com/praetorian-inc/noseyparker/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35004184
• https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/12/14/nosey-parker/
• https://www.praetorian.com/blog/six-months-of-finding-secrets-with-nosey-parker/