diff --git a/docs/static/releasenotes.asciidoc b/docs/static/releasenotes.asciidoc
index e2aad6bc5..da4766b34 100644
--- a/docs/static/releasenotes.asciidoc
+++ b/docs/static/releasenotes.asciidoc
@@ -3930,4 +3930,4 @@ Here are the plugin changes.
   - Tweaked logging statements to reduce verbosity
   - Fixed numerous issues relating to builds on Travis https://github.com/logstash-plugins/logstash-output-elasticsearch/pull/799[#799]
 * logstash-output-s3
-  - Fixed issue where on restart, 0 byte files could erroneously be uploaded to s3 https://github.com/logstash-plugins/logstash-output-s3/issues/195[#195]
\ No newline at end of file
+  - Fixed issue where on restart, 0 byte files could erroneously be uploaded to s3 https://github.com/logstash-plugins/logstash-output-s3/issues/195[#195]
diff --git a/rakelib/artifacts.rake b/rakelib/artifacts.rake
index b735ad110..9319b0fe1 100644
--- a/rakelib/artifacts.rake
+++ b/rakelib/artifacts.rake
@@ -84,6 +84,10 @@ namespace "artifact" do
     @exclude_paths << "bin/rspec"
     @exclude_paths << "bin/rspec.bat"
 
+    # vendored test/spec artifacts from upstream
+    @exclude_paths << 'vendor/**/gems/*/test/**/*'
+    @exclude_paths << 'vendor/**/gems/*/spec/**/*'
+
     @exclude_paths
   end