Nkeys
CVE-2023-46129
HIGH
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A04:2025 - Cryptographic Failures
ASVS 5.0
V11 - Cryptography Key management, no hard-coded keys
|
| Impact | CVSS score of 7.5 (HIGH). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. EPSS exploitation probability: 0.12%. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | This vulnerability can be exploited remotely over the network. Successful exploitation could compromise the high-severity affected system. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
NATS.io is a high performance open source pub-sub distributed communication technology, built for the cloud, on-premise, IoT, and edge computing. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity.
RemediationAI
A vendor patch is available. Apply the latest security update as soon as possible. Apply vendor patches when available. Implement network segmentation and monitoring as interim mitigations.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 2 packages in go
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified under CWE-321. 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. Affected products include: Linuxfoundation Nats-Server, Nats Nkeys. Version information: through 0.4.5.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Primary rating from GitHub Advisory · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorGitHub Advisory
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionGitHub Advisory
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.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Information disclosure occurs when an application unintentionally exposes sensitive data that aids attackers in reconnaissance or directly compromises security.
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
VulDB
Exploit-DB