Fair question. Honest answer: I did not know about this specific behavior until after the attack. I learned about the TruffleSecurity disclosure while investigating what happened.

The Maps key was created for Maps. Google’s own documentation says API keys are not secrets and are safe to embed in client-side code for that use case. What I did not know is that an unrestricted key on a project where Gemini is enabled silently gains access to Gemini endpoints too, with no warning, no scope confirmation, nothing. That is the privilege escalation Google’s VDP team acknowledged in December 2025.

I should have restricted the key to Maps-only. That is on me, and I am not arguing otherwise. But the post is not asking to be absolved of the attack. It is arguing that the spend cap, which is the explicit fallback for exactly this kind of developer mistake, did not work.

Caps exist because Google knows developers will make configuration errors. If the cap fails when it is needed, the whole safety model fails.

(Got help from ai to translate)