| Titolo | PHPGurukul News Portal using Python Django and MySQL 1.0 Use of Hard-coded Cryptographic Key |
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| Descrizione | The application exposes a development-generated Django SECRET_KEY directly in settings.py (prefixed with django-insecure-). This single secret is used by Django for signing session cookies, CSRF tokens, password reset tokens, and other cryptographic signing operations. Because the secret is present in source control or the repository, an attacker who obtains the key can trivially forge signed artifacts and bypass fundamental security controls. Practical exploits include creating valid session cookies that impersonate arbitrary users—including superusers and administrators—allowing immediate unauthorized access to protected functionality and sensitive data. Similarly, an attacker can generate legitimate-looking password reset tokens for any account, effecting account takeover without needing email access or user interaction. If the application employs signed serialized payloads (for example, using Django’s signing utilities with pickle or other serializers), an attacker can craft malicious signed objects that, when deserialized by the application, may trigger arbitrary code execution on the server. This amplifies the impact from data theft to full remote compromise. The vulnerability is remotely exploitable with no authentication, requires little technical sophistication, and can be automated for rapid exploitation, which significantly raises the likelihood of large-scale damage. Because the same hardcoded key is often copied across development, staging, CI/CD pipelines, and sometimes even production deployments, the blast radius is broad: every environment that reuses the secret becomes immediately vulnerable. |
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| Fonte | ⚠️ https://github.com/NishantKumar-CSE/News-Portal-Python-Django-Project/blob/main/Hard-coded%20Cryptographic%20Key.md#password-reset-token-generation |
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| Utente | Nishant_Kumar (UID 91843) |
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| Sottomissione | 20/10/2025 17:58 (11 mesi fa) |
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| Moderazione | 02/11/2025 14:12 (13 days later) |
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| Stato | Accettato |
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| Voce VulDB | 330909 [PHPGurukul News Portal 1.0 /onps/settings.py SECRET_KEY cifratura debole] |
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| Punti | 20 |
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