The Dump That Almost Killed a Unicorn
From a Heapdump to Production DB in 3 Commands
I downloaded a JVM heapdump. Found prod DB credentials inside. Logged in. Because why not?
🏃 The Setup
This wasn’t your average startup. They were big. Over $200M raised. Seven-figure monthly active users. Engineers all over the place.
And then… there was /actuator/heapdump just vibing publicly on one of their subdomains.
Downloaded the dump. Heavy one. Decided to go old school on it:
strings heapdump | grep -E "jdbc:mysql://|password="
And there it was. Nestled in the memory dump like a warm forgotten cookie — their production database credentials.
mysql -h unicorn-db.ap-south-1.rds.amazonaws.com -u appadmin -p
# Enter password: (spoiler: it worked)
🔐 Disclosure Time
I reached out quietly to report the issue. No big announcement. No public tweets. Just a polite message saying, “Hey, your prod DB credentials are publicly downloadable.”
The endpoint was taken down. The credentials were changed. But they never replied.
They fixed it. Silently. Without a single thank-you.
💡 A Message to Other Startups
- 🔥 Spring Boot Actuator endpoints should NEVER be exposed in production.
- 🔍 Always audit your staging & debug endpoints before going live.
- 🧠 Heapdumps are memory snapshots — don’t underestimate what they reveal.
Some startups spend millions on DevOps but skip the basics that matter.
🤝 Proactive, Not Reactive
If you’re a founder reading this — security doesn’t have to be expensive. But ignoring it could be.
Peace Out✌️ !!!