Skip to content

IBM Watson Personality Insights Key

Service Name: IBM Watson Personality Insights

Service Description: IBM Watson Personality Insights was a service that used linguistic analytics to infer individuals' personality characteristics, needs, and values from written text. The service analyzed text to help understand habits and preferences at an individual level, and at scale.

Service Address: https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/personality-insights (Note: This service was deprecated on December 1, 2021)

Validation Type: API Auth

IP Allow list: IP restrictions can be configured through IBM Cloud IAM settings

Secret Access Scope: Granted access to the IBM Watson Personality Insights API, allowing applications to analyze text and extract insights about personality characteristics.

Secret Revokement URL: https://cloud.ibm.com/iam/apikeys

Secret Example: WatsonPI_AbCd1234EfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz

Suspicious Activity Investigation Instructions:

  • Review IBM Cloud Activity Tracker logs for unusual API calls or usage patterns
  • Check for unexpected spikes in API usage or calls from unfamiliar IP addresses
  • Monitor billing statements for unexpected charges related to Watson services
  • Verify if the key has been used in applications or environments it shouldn't be
  • Check for data extraction or analysis operations that don't align with expected business use

Mitigation Instructions:

  • Log in to the IBM Cloud console at https://cloud.ibm.com

  • Navigate to "Manage" > "Access (IAM)" > "API keys"

  • Locate the compromised API key in the list
  • Click the "Actions" menu (three dots) and select "Delete"
  • Create a new API key with appropriate access restrictions
  • Update all legitimate applications with the new API key
  • Consider implementing more restrictive access policies using IBM Cloud IAM
  • Note: Since this service was deprecated in 2021, consider migrating to

alternative IBM Watson services if still using this functionality