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.
If an attacker gains access to an NPM access token, they might be able to gain access to any private package linked to this token.
What is the potential impact?
The exact impact of the compromise of an NPM access token varies depending on the permissions granted to this token. It can range from loss of
sensitive data and source code to severe supply chain attacks.
Compromise of sensitive source code
The affected service is used to store private packages and repositories. If a token is leaked, it can be used by unauthorized individuals to gain
access to your sensitive code, proprietary libraries, and other confidential resources. This can lead to intellectual property theft, unauthorized
modifications, or even sabotage of your software.
If these private packages contain other secrets, it might even lead to further breaches in the organization’s services.
Supply chain attacks
If the leaked secret gives an attacker the ability to publish code to private packages or repositories under the name of the organization, 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.
