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?
Hubspot credentials can be used for varieties of actions on the Hubspot services, including managing CRM, CMS, marketing automation, customer
service and analytics.
Below are some real-world scenarios that illustrate some impacts of an attacker exploiting the secret.
Phishing and spam
An attacker can use this secret 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.
Exceeding rate limits
Using a leaked secret, an attacker may be able to make hundreds or thousands of authenticated calls to an online service. It is common for online
services to enforce a rate limit to prevent their servers from being overwhelmed.
If an attacker is able to exceed a user-based rate limit, they may be able to cause a denial of service for the user. If this continues over a long
period of time, the user may also be subject to additional fees or may have their account terminated.
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.
Compromise of sensitive personal data
This kind of service is often used to exchange information that could include personal information, chat logs, and other private data that users
have shared on the platform. This is called Personally Identifiable Information.
The leaked app key could provide a gateway for unauthorized individuals to access and misuse this data, compromising the privacy and safety of the
application users.
In many industries and locations, there are legal and compliance requirements to protect sensitive data. If this kind of sensitive personal data
gets leaked, companies face legal consequences, penalties, or violations of privacy laws.
