API keys are generally not considered secure; they are typically accessible to clients, making it easy for someone to steal an API key. Once the key is stolen, it has no expiration, so it may be used indefinitely, unless the project owner revokes or regenerates the key.

In Private key, the same key (secret key) is used for encryption and decryption. In this key is symmetric because the only key is copy or share by another party to decrypt the cipher text….Related Articles.

The API key ID is included in all requests to identify the client. The secret key is known only to the client and the API Gateway. It’s will require some code on your client and Server but most languages and frameworks provide support. To learn more, check out this blog post to learn how to protect your API Keys.

The latest Google API Key billing will cost you $0.50 USD / 1000 additional requests, up to 100,000 daily. However, you can manage your cost of use by setting your own QPD limits in Google Cloud Platform Console.

Google Maps Platform offers a free $200 monthly credit for Maps, Routes, and Places (see Billing Account Credits). Note that the Maps Embed API, Maps SDK for Android, and Maps SDK for iOS currently have no usage limits and are free (usage of the API or SDKs is not applied against your $200 monthly credit).

Get the API key

1. Go to the Google Cloud Console.
2. Click the project drop-down and select or create the project for which you want to add an API key.
3. Click the menu button and select APIs & Services > Credentials.
4. On the Credentials page, click + Create Credentials > API key.
5. Click Close.

How to generate a Google Maps API key

1. Log in to the Google Cloud Platform Console.
2. Select an existing project or create a new one to add an API key to.
3. Navigate to the APIs & Services > Credentials page.
4. On the Credentials page, click Create credentials > API key and follow the prompts.

until October 2011 when Google announced that starting from January 2012 they will start charging for usage of they’re mapping service. How much? Sites were offered Google Maps Premium – a paid for service starting from $10,000 a year, which also offers branded maps and custom uses of Google Maps.

The API key is a unique identifier that authenticates requests associated with your project for usage and billing purposes. You must have at least one API key associated with your project. To create an API key: Go to the APIs & Services > Credentials page.

How much does it cost to use the Google Maps Platform? See the Pricing Sheet for an overview of cost per API. If your application generates requests or map load volumes below the complimentary $200 per month usage, your usage is free. Usage that exceeds the $200 monthly credit will be charged to your billing account.

To help keep your API keys secure, follow these best practices:

1. Do not embed API keys directly in code.
2. Do not store API keys in files inside your application’s source tree.
3. Set up application and API key restrictions.
4. Delete unneeded API keys to minimize exposure to attacks.
5. Regenerate your API keys periodically.

In a word, yes. As stated by one of the Firebase team engineers, your Firebase API key only identifies your project with Google’s servers. It is not a security risk to expose it.

API Keys are simple to use, they’re short, static, and don’t expire unless revoked. They provide an easy way for multiple services to communicate. If you provide an API for your clients to consume, it’s essential for you to build it in the right way.

By default, the API key lifetime is set to 0, which means that the keys will never expire. To ensure that your keys are frequently rotated and each key is unique when regenerated, you must specify a validity period that ranges between 1—525600 minutes.

Basic API Key implementation doesn’t support authentication without additional code or services, it doesn’t support authentication without a matching third-party system or secondary application, and it doesn’t support authorization without some serious “hacks” to extend use beyond what they were originally intended for …

For storing fixed API keys, the following common strategies exist for storing secrets in your source code:

1. Hidden in BuildConfigs.
2. Embedded in resource file.
3. Obfuscating with Proguard.
4. Disguised or Encrypted Strings.
5. Hidden in native libraries with NDK.
6. Hidden as constants in source code.

So even if the API keys don’t contain any sensitive data, they are a security risk from the moment they are used to protect access to resources, because its easy to extract them from client applications and reuse them to perform automated attacks, where the attacker is able to impersonate the API server as being the …

So, where should API keys be stored?

• git-remote-gcrypt. The first solution lets you encrypt a whole Git repository.
• git-secret. git-secret is a tool that works on your local machine and encrypts specific files before you push them to your repository.
• git-crypt.
• BlackBox.
• Heroku Configuration and Config Vars.
• Docker secrets.

Generally, things that you do not want the show to someone else, you hide them safely as an env variable. Your AWS secret key is an obvious example, while you can safely store the default query limit in your config file.