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 credentials.
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.
