In brief

• GitBook disclosed a targeted cyberattack involving AI agents that gave an attacker unauthorized access to some of its infrastructure credentials on November 2.
• Potentially exposed information includes API tokens, integration secrets, and questions submitted to GitBook's AI assistant. The company says it has found no evidence that hosted content was modified.
• GitBook revoked personal API tokens and urged customers to replace connected credentials. Crypto exchange PancakeSwap temporarily took its documentation offline before moving it away from GitBook.

GitBook, a documentation platform widely used by cryptocurrency projects, has disclosed a security breach involving AI agents that allowed an attacker to gain access to some of its infrastructure credentials, forcing the company to shut down services and revoke customer access tokens.

In a security disclosure published today, the company described the incident as “a sophisticated, highly targeted attack using AI agents.” The attacker gained unauthorized access at 7 p.m. Central European Time on November 2, according to GitBook, which said it detected the intrusion immediately and moved to contain it.

The reference to AI agents is significant. Unlike traditional chatbots that simply respond to questions, AI agents can carry out sequences of actions, interact with software, and perform tasks with limited human supervision, making them potentially useful to attackers trying to automate parts of a cyberattack. Some are even capable of acting autonomously and even against their guidelines, as OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s experiments have proven.

GitBook has not explained exactly how the attacker used these tools, which AI systems were involved, or how the credentials were obtained. Its disclosure also does not establish that GitBook's own AI products were responsible for the intrusion.

The company took its application and documentation sites requiring authentication offline while securing its infrastructure. It also kept publicly available documentation accessible through cached copies for as long as possible, allowing visitors to continue reading previously saved versions of pages even while the underlying systems were unavailable.

A separate status notice acknowledged that GitBook was experiencing downtime affecting its published documentation sites and editor. By Tuesday afternoon, GitBook said its application, API, and published documentation were accessible again, although some services could remain degraded during recovery.

What was exposed, and why does it matter?

GitBook is effectively an online instruction manual for software products. Cryptocurrency projects use platforms like it to publish technical explanations, developer instructions, and guides that help users understand everything from connecting software to interacting with decentralized financial applications.

The documents themselves are often public, but the systems that maintain them can connect to private accounts and external services. Those connections depend on credentials that are supposed to remain secret, and GitBook says some of them may have been exposed.

Its investigation identified several potentially affected categories, including integration tokens, Git Sync secrets used to connect documentation with code repositories, and API tokens that allow software to communicate with GitBook automatically.

Crypto projects take precautions

The incident has already prompted a response from the cryptocurrency industry, where documentation websites often serve as an important source of official instructions.

Decentralized exchange PancakeSwap temporarily disabled its documentation following news of the incident, although it said its own systems had not been compromised.

In a public statement, PancakeSwap said its “docs are not compromised and [the] PancakeSwap app is not affected.” The exchange nevertheless took its documentation offline as a precaution and redirected visitors to its homepage.

PancakeSwap reminded users that its documentation does not require them to perform wallet transactions, warning that “docs never ask you to connect your wallet or approve tokens.”

PancakeSwap subsequently announced that its documentation was back online after being moved from GitBook to infrastructure under its own control, with existing documentation links continuing to work.

GitBook tells users to replace their digital keys

GitBook says it blocked the attacker, addressed the vulnerabilities involved, replaced its own infrastructure credentials, and invalidated customer API tokens. But customers using GitBook alongside other services still have work to do.

The company's instructions begin with “rotate any existing GitBook API tokens,” meaning customers should replace their old digital access keys with newly generated ones.

GitBook also instructed customers to replace third-party API tokens and secrets used to connect external tools to its platform, including credentials associated with published integrations. Users of its Model Context Protocol, or MCP, server must authenticate again; MCP is a system that allows AI assistants and other software tools to connect to services such as GitBook.

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