Bitbucket artifact files can leak plaintext authentication secrets

Bitbucket artifact files can leak plaintext authentication secrets

May 21, 2024 at 04:01PM

The issue involves threat actors breaching AWS accounts by exploiting plaintext AWS authentication secrets leaked in Atlassian Bitbucket artifacts. Mandiant discovered this during an investigation and highlighted how seemingly secured data can be exposed in public repositories, jeopardizing security. Developers are cautioned to review artifacts and deploy code scanning to prevent secret exposure events.

The key takeaways from the meeting notes are:

1. Threat actors breached AWS accounts by exploiting plaintext authentication secrets leaked in Atlassian Bitbucket artifact objects.
2. Bitbucket Pipelines, an integrated continuous delivery/deployment service, is used to automate build, test, and deployment processes and can inadvertently expose secured variables and sensitive information.
3. Secured variables in Bitbucket are stored in encrypted form, but they can be exposed in plaintext in artifact files generated during pipeline runs, leading to potential security risks.
4. Developers may inadvertently export all environment variables to an artifact object, causing secured variables to be exposed in plaintext in the artifact file.
5. There is a risk of unintentional exposure of sensitive information if ‘bitbucket-pipelines.yml’ is misconfigured to include secured variables in logs or artifacts.
6. Mitigation tips include using a dedicated product for managing secrets, carefully reviewing artifacts for plain text secrets, and deploying code scanning throughout the pipeline lifecycle to detect and remove secret exposure events before code reaches production.

Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to know from the meeting notes!

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