1

So I made a mistake and pushed some sensitive not for public information to github.

After realizing my mistake, I removed the information, re-committed and pushed again.

Then to remove it from git commit history, I rewrote my commit history using git rebase and force pushed it to the remote.

Now I have a question, is there any way that data could be extracted from within the .git folder? Keep in mind, the remote repository is public.

CodeWizard
  • 128,036
  • 21
  • 144
  • 167
sparta93
  • 3,684
  • 5
  • 32
  • 63
  • 1
    See https://help.github.com/articles/remove-sensitive-data/ – Whymarrh Feb 22 '16 at 18:49
  • Rebase will never "delete" commits. It may make them "orphans" in the sense that they are not reachable by your HEAD or a branch, but they can always be retrieved using reflog assuming they haven't been garbage collected (which usually happens after 30 days) – Jonathan.Brink Feb 22 '16 at 18:51

2 Answers2

3

Every commit is stored in the git repository, even removed. You can see them with:

git reflog show

You can then checkout a commit with this reflog command. See this documentation: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-reflog

However, a git gc can permanently remove unreferenced commit/files.

Jérémie B
  • 10,611
  • 1
  • 26
  • 43
0

The simple answer is yes. You can retrieve any information stored under the .git folder.

Read this detailed answer on how to do it: How to move HEAD back to a previous location? (Detached head)

In general: As long as the commits are stored in your .git folder they can be "recovered" in different ways. If you want to "remove" then from the .git folder you have to "clean" you repository.

How to clean (delete) the old commits from the repository?

# remove any old data not related to any commit
git gc --aggressive --prune=now

How to find unreachable file?

# Check and verify that all the objects in the repository are committed
# and print out a list of all the loose (dangling) objects
git fsck --full
Community
  • 1
  • 1
CodeWizard
  • 128,036
  • 21
  • 144
  • 167