Security-related question about a possible exposed credential

[Emma-NYL]

Hello,

My name is Emma, I am conducting an academic study on possible credential exposure in public GitHub repositories.

While analyzing this repository, I found a string that may represent a credential. I'm including the code snippet below containing possible leakage. To avoid exposing sensitive information publicly, I marked the sensitive information.

Could you please help clarify whether the detected string is:

1. a real credential, or
2. a placeholder / example value?

Thank you for your time.

---

Code snippet (sensitive values masked):

<?php
/* This is a basic example of using Jitbit Helpdesk API with PHP */
$url = "https://XXX.jitbit.com/helpdesk/api/tickets";
$us****me = "us****me";
$pa****rd = "pa****rd";


//initing curl
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $us****me  . ":" . $pa****rd);

Thank you in advance for your time - I really appreciate it!

Sincerely,
Emma