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.
This rule flags instances of:
- Alibaba Cloud AccessKey ID
- Alibaba Cloud AccessKey secret
What is the potential impact?
AccessKeys are long term credentials designed to authenticate and authorize requests to Alibaba Cloud.
If your application interacts with Alibaba Cloud then it requires AccessKeys to access all the resources it needs to function properly. Resources
that can be accessed depend on the permissions granted to the Alibaba Cloud account.
These credentials may authenticate to the account root user
who has unrestricted access to all resources in your Alibaba Cloud account, including billing information.
Below are some real-world scenarios that illustrate some impacts of an attacker exploiting the secret.
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 data
If the affected service is used to store or process personally identifiable information or other sensitive data, attackers knowing an
authentication secret could be able to access it. Depending on the type of data that is compromised, it could lead to privacy violations, identity
theft, financial loss, or other negative outcomes.
In most cases, a company suffering a sensitive data compromise will face a reputational loss when the security issue is publicly disclosed.
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.
