owasp-amass/amass · error

AddCredentials: The accountName argument is invalid

Error message

AddCredentials: The accountName argument is invalid

What it means

DataSource.AddCredentials adds a *Credentials entry under an accountName key, but rejects the call when accountName is the empty string or the receiver ds is nil. The error indicates a programming mistake by the caller rather than a config file problem: credentials were passed without a usable account identifier.

Source

Thrown at config/datasrcs.go:60

	key := strings.ToLower(strings.TrimSpace(source))
	if key == "" || c.DataSrcConfigs == nil {
		return nil
	}

	var dsc *DataSource
	for _, src := range c.DataSrcConfigs.Datasources {
		if strings.ToLower(src.Name) == key {
			dsc = src
			break
		}
	}
	return dsc
}

// AddCredentials adds the Credentials provided to the configuration.
func (ds *DataSource) AddCredentials(accountName string, cred *Credentials) error {
	if accountName == "" || ds == nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("AddCredentials: The accountName argument is invalid")
	}

	if ds.Creds == nil {
		ds.Creds = make(map[string]*Credentials)
	}

	ds.Creds[accountName] = cred
	return nil
}

// GetCredentials returns the first set of Credentials associated with the given DataSource name.
func (dsc *DataSourceConfig) GetCredentials(dsName string) *Credentials {
	if dsc == nil || dsc.Datasources == nil {
		return nil
	}

	for _, src := range dsc.Datasources {
		if src.Name == dsName && src.Creds != nil {

View on GitHub (pinned to 79299dce87)

Solutions

1. Pass a non-empty accountName: ds.AddCredentials("account1", cred).
2. Ensure the *DataSource receiver is non-nil before calling AddCredentials (check the lookup/constructor result).
3. If the name comes from user input or env, validate it is non-empty before the call.
4. Log or return which data source failed so the empty name's origin is traceable.

Example fix

// before
ds.AddCredentials(account, cred) // account may be ""
// after
if account == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("account name required for datasource %s", dsName)
}
ds.AddCredentials(account, cred)

if ds == nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("datasource not initialized")
}
if accountName == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("accountName must be non-empty")
}

func addable(ds *config.DataSource, accountName string) bool {
    return ds != nil && accountName != ""
}

if err := ds.AddCredentials(name, cred); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "accountName argument is invalid") {
        // log which datasource/credential pair failed
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling ds.AddCredentials("", cred) with an empty account name, or calling the method on a nil *DataSource obtained from a failed lookup (e.g. GetDataSource returning nil).

Common situations: Programmatic config construction where the account name comes from a variable that is unset/empty; forgetting to check that a data source lookup succeeded before adding credentials; refactors that dropped the name assignment.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Must be a positive integer", "Invalid value", "Unsupported": the invalid-argument-value error family, when a library rejects the value you pass — this error's family across 35 libraries.

Related errors

• AddCredentials: The Credentials argument is invalid
• brute forcing cannot be performed without DNS resolution
• active enumeration cannot be performed without DNS resolutio
• resolvers section is not a list
• no valid resolvers were found

AI-assisted analysis of owasp-amass/amass@79299dce87 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fd36089d5e669b03. Report an issue: GitHub.