remediation-auth

Remediation: Authentication & Authorization Vulnerabilities

Actionable fix patterns for auth-related security vulnerabilities.

When to Use This Skill

• Fixing hardcoded credentials - After finding secrets in code
• Fixing JWT issues - After finding weak JWT configuration
• Fixing deserialization - After finding unsafe deserialization
• Fixing access control - After finding missing authorization checks

When NOT to Use This Skill

• Detecting vulnerabilities - Use vulnerability-patterns skill
• Fixing injection issues - Use remediation-injection skill
• Fixing crypto issues - Use remediation-crypto skill
• Fixing config issues - Use remediation-config skill

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Hardcoded Credentials (CWE-798)

Problem

Credentials in source code are exposed in version control and can be extracted from compiled code.

All Languages

Don't:

# VULNERABLE: Hardcoded credentials
API_KEY = "sk-1234567890abcdef"
DB_PASSWORD = "admin123"
JWT_SECRET = "mysupersecretkey"

Do:

# SECURE: Environment variables
import os
API_KEY = os.environ.get('API_KEY')
DB_PASSWORD = os.environ.get('DB_PASSWORD')

# SECURE: Configuration file (not in git)
import configparser
config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.read('/etc/myapp/secrets.ini')
api_key = config['api']['key']

# SECURE: Secret manager (AWS Secrets Manager)
import boto3
client = boto3.client('secretsmanager')
response = client.get_secret_value(SecretId='myapp/api-key')
api_key = response['SecretString']

# SECURE: Vault
import hvac
client = hvac.Client(url='https://vault.example.com')
secret = client.secrets.kv.read_secret_version(path='myapp/api-key')
api_key = secret['data']['data']['value']

Configuration Files

Don't:

# VULNERABLE: .env committed to git
DATABASE_URL=postgres://admin:password123@localhost/db
API_SECRET=sk-live-abcdef123456

# VULNERABLE: docker-compose.yml with secrets
environment:
  - DB_PASSWORD=admin123

Do:

# SECURE: .env.example (template, no real values)
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:password@host/database
API_SECRET=your-api-secret-here

# SECURE: docker-compose with external secrets
environment:
  - DB_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/db_password
secrets:
  db_password:
    external: true

# SECURE: Use secret references
environment:
  - DB_PASSWORD=${DB_PASSWORD}  # Set at runtime