Okuzeka
Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Credentials

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/krəˈdenʃəlz/nounCore term

In software engineering, credentials means: The details that prove who a user is and let them log in, most often a username and password, but also keys, tokens and certificates.

In Turkish: kimlik bilgileri, giriş bilgileri, erişim bilgileri

How it is used

Usually plural. People speak of stolen, leaked, compromised or hard-coded credentials and of credential theft. After an incident, teams reset or rotate credentials. Many breaches start with valid credentials rather than with an exploit.

Example sentences

  1. The attacker logged in with valid credentials taken from a phishing page.

  2. We found database credentials hard-coded in the source code.

Common collocations

  • stolen credentials
  • hard-coded credentials
  • reset credentials
  • credential theft
  • valid credentials
  • passwordA secret string of characters that a person types to prove their identity and log in to an account, device or system.
  • authenticationThe process of checking who a user or system is, for example with a password, a token or a fingerprint, before giving access.
  • phishingA trick in which attackers send fake emails, messages or websites that look trustworthy, hoping people will click a link, open a file or reveal their passwords.
  • brute-force attackAn attack that tries a huge number of passwords or keys one after another, usually automatically, until the right one is found.
  • compromiseTo get unauthorised access to or control of a system, account or network, so that it can no longer be trusted.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: