The Lord of the Rings: Secrets, SSL, and Firewalls – A Developer's Quest

The Quest Begins (The "Why") Honestly, I was just trying to ship a tiny API for a side‑project when I realized I’d left my database password hard‑coded in a config file that got committed to a public repo. Cue the panic. I spent the next hour frantically rolling commits, scrubbing history, and apolo