In most cases, trust boundaries are violated when a secret is exposed in a source code repository or an uncontrolled deployment environment.
Unintended people who don’t need to know the secret might get access to it. They might then be able to use it to gain unwanted access to associated
services or resources.
The trust issue can be more or less severe depending on the people’s role and entitlement.
What is the potential impact?
Below are some real-world scenarios that illustrate some impacts of an attacker exploiting the secret.
Supply chain attacks
If the leaked secret gives an attacker the ability to publish code to private packages or repositories under the name of the organization, then
there may exist grave consequences beyond the compromise of source code. The attacker may inject malware, backdoors, or other harmful code into these
private repositories.
This can cause further security breaches inside the organization, but will also affect clients if the malicious code gets added to any products.
Distributing code that (unintentionally) contains backdoors or malware can lead to widespread security vulnerabilities, reputational damage, and
potential legal liabilities.
Malware distribution
Due to this vulnerability, malware can be stored and spread, both to users of the service and to other potential targets.
A malware depends on
the attacker’s intentions, as the following examples show:
- Cryptojacking malware, whose goal is to "mine" cryptocurrencies on the affected computers or servers.
- Spyware that spies out sensitive information from victims.
In the worst case, malware can cause the target systems to be completely compromised and allow attackers to infiltrate the systems.
