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.
Phishing and spam
An attacker can use this API key to spam users or lure them into links to a malicious domain controlled by the attacker.
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
Once a user has been phished on a legitimate-seeming third-party website, an attacker can collect the user’s credentials, bypass multi-factor
authentication (MFA), and take over the user’s account on the trusted website.
Financial loss
Financial losses can occur when a secret is used to access a paid third-party-provided service and is disclosed as part of the source code of
client applications. Having the secret, each user of the application will be able to use it without limit to use the third party service to their own
need, including in a way that was not expected.
This additional use of the secret will lead to added costs with the service provider.
Moreover, when rate or volume limiting is set up on the provider side, this additional use can prevent the regular operation of the affected
application. This might result in a partial denial of service for all the application’s users.
