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?
Leaking this secret can allow an attacker to exploit the Chief Tools API, and therefore any of the Chief apps.
Below are some real-world scenarios that illustrate some impacts of an attacker exploiting the secret.
Domain hijacking
If the leaked secret gives an attacker a Cert Chief entitlement, the attacker can use it to stay informed about the certificates of your domain to
automatically renew and take ownership of the next certificate. This can lead to a domain hijacking attack.
Supply chain attacks
If the leaked secret gives an attacker a Deploy Chief entitlement, 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.
Phishing and spam
I the leaked secret gives an attacker a Tny entitlement, an attacker can use this API token to hide a malicious domain and use it in spam/phishing
campaigns.
Spam can cause users to be exposed to the following:
- Unsolicited, inappropriate content
- Fraudulent attempts to trick users into sending information or money
- Abusive or hateful statements
- False advertising or fraudulent claims
