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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2023-46129 json

xkeys Seal encryption used fixed key for all encryption

published 2023-10-30 3 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also BIT-nats-2023-46129 , EUVD-2023-2780 , GHSA-mr45-rx8q-wcm9 , GO-2023-2163

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 39%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

NATS.io is a high performance open source pub-sub distributed communication technology, built for the cloud, on-premise, IoT, and edge computing. The cryptographic key handling library, nkeys, recently gained support for encryption, not just for signing/authentication. This is used in nats-server 2.10 (Sep 2023) and newer for authentication callouts. In nkeys versions 0.4.0 through 0.4.5, corresponding with NATS server versions 2.10.0 through 2.10.3, the nkeys library's `xkeys` encryption handling logic mistakenly passed an array by value into an internal function, where the function mutated that buffer to populate the encryption key to use. As a result, all encryption was actually to an all-zeros key. This affects encryption only, not signing. FIXME: FILL IN IMPACT ON NATS-SERVER AUTH CALLOUT SECURITY. nkeys Go library 0.4.6, corresponding with NATS Server 2.10.4, has a patch for this issue. No known workarounds are available. For any application handling auth callouts in Go, if using the nkeys library, update the dependency, recompile and deploy that in lockstep.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/nats-io/nkeys 0.4.6
  • go github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2 2.10.4
  • bitnami nats 2.10.4
  • linuxfoundation nats-server 2.10.4
  • nats nkeys 0.4.6
  • nats-server Debian 14, Debian 13 2.10.4-1
  • golang-github-nats-io-nkeys Debian 14, Debian 13 0.4.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-46129

  • nats-server Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +3 more 2.10.4-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2023-46129

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • telegraf CBL-Mariner 2.0 1.27.4-1
  • telegraf Azure Linux 3.0 1.29.4-1

azure linux advisories AZL-31792AZL-35298

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-46129 updated cvss 7.5

nkeys: xkeys Seal encryption used fixed key for all encryption

  • Red Hat OpenShift Serverless openshift-serverless-1/ingress-rhel8-operator
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/dpu-network-rhel8-operator
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat Openshift Container Storage 4 ocs4/mcg-rhel8-operator, ocs4/ocs-rhel8-operator
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4 odf4/odf-multicluster-rhel9-operator
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing 2 rhosdt/tempo-gateway-rhel8
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing 3.0 rhosdt/tempo-gateway-rhel8 0.1.2-19
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2023:7663
  • Red Hat OpenShift API for Data Protection oadp/oadp-velero-plugin-rhel8 Red Hat Ceph Storage 5 rhceph/rhceph-5-dashboard-rhel8 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/ose-thanos-rhel9, openshift4/ose-contour-rhel8, openshift4/ose-prom-label-proxy, openshift4/ose-prometheus-rhel9, openshift4/oc-mirror-plugin-rhel9, openshift4/ose-operator-sdk-rhel9, +3 more Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4 odf4/mcg-rhel9-operator, odf4/ocs-rhel9-operator, odf4/odf-rhel8-operator, odf4/odr-rhel9-operator Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing 3.0 rhosdt/tempo-rhel8 2.3.0-2, rhosdt/tempo-query-rhel8 0.6.0-3, rhosdt/jaeger-agent-rhel8 1.51.0-1, rhosdt/jaeger-query-rhel8 1.51.0-1, rhosdt/tempo-rhel8-operator 0.6.0-2, rhosdt/jaeger-ingester-rhel8 1.51.0-1, +11 more Red Hat OpenShift GitOps openshift-gitops-1/argocd-rhel8, openshift-gitops-1/kam-delivery-rhel8
    +1 more products
    Red Hat Quay 3 quay/quay-rhel8
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
20 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.45% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 39% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
OSV 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/nats-io/nkeys
>=0.4.0, <0.4.6
0.4.6
go github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2
>=2.10.0, <2.10.4
2.10.4
bitnami nats
>=2.10.0, <2.10.4
2.10.4

Affected products

  • nats-io nkeys

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-321 Use of Hard-coded Cryptographic Key
  • CWE-325 Missing Cryptographic Step

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.