Security vulnerabilities

  • Status Closed
  • Assigned To
    cbay
  • Private
Attached to Project: Security vulnerabilities
Opened by mic13alw37dat - 03.04.2025
Last edited by cbay - 04.04.2025

FS#148 - Expired Encryption Key in Security alwaysdata.com Site

Hi,
The Encryption key from alwaysdata Security Team has expired, making it impossible for security researchers to securely report vulnerabilities / messages via encrypted communication. This can prevent security researchers or users from securely reporting vulnerabilities / sending messages, as they may not be able to encrypt their messages. Expired key reduce the effectiveness of the responsible disclosure process and can expose organizations to unreported security risks.
The lack of a valid GPG/PGP key introduces unnecessary risk, especially when a critical vulnerability is involved. It is currently not doing its job.

Upon verification, the referenced PGP key has the following:
Expiration Date: [expired: 2022-12-11]
Status: Expired

Steps To Reproduce:
Check key from alwaysdata security site https://help.alwaysdata.com/en/security/bug-bounty/ as presented below in POC section below.

Proof of Concept - POC:
From your security site https://help.alwaysdata.com/en/security/bug-bounty/
"Reports about vulnerabilities are examined by our security analysts. If you need to encrypt payload, we strongly recommend you to use the 0xDFDD2138A363986B GPG public key. Reports must be submitted using our bug tracking interface."
With added link https://www.alwaysdata.com/static/0xDFDD2138A363986B.pub.asc

From Terminal:
wget https://www.alwaysdata.com/static/0xDFDD2138A363986B.pub.asc

gpg –import 0xDFDD2138A363986B.pub.asc
gpg: key 53EC46DAA71D9A1A: public key "alwaysdata security (Security team at alwaysdata https://www.alwaysdata.com) security@alwaysdata.com" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1

gpg –list-keys –with-fingerprint –with-subkey-fingerprint –verbose
pub rsa4096 2018-09-26 [SC] [expired: 2022-12-11]

    9EE5 6D51 F03F 7756 837D  C0D2 53EC 46DA A71D 9A1A

uid [ expired] alwaysdata security (Security team at alwaysdata https://www.alwaysdata.com) security@alwaysdata.com sub rsa4096 2018-09-26 [E] [expired: 2022-12-11]

    BD34 402C EB6B 2D54 8C4D  1FEE DFDD 2138 A363 986B

Today is 2025-04-04.

Screenshot: can attach, but can not see here image upload feature.

As shown, this may result in using an expired (invalid) key due to the query output above.

Severity
Medium (6.1)
Weakness
Use of a Key Past its Expiration Date

Impact
Security researchers are unable to encrypt reports / messages using the provided GPG/PGP key.
Sensitive vulnerability information may be exposed to interception if sent unencrypted.
This weakens the responsible disclosure process and may delay security issue resolution.
This can leads to security concerns from the researchers and visitors (kind of reputation damage - as we can see 'Expired' on the security section - given GPG/PGP key - email address for messages with confidential content). The lack of a valid GPG/PGP key introduces unnecessary risk, especially when a critical vulnerability is involved.

Using this expired key could result in insecure communications or failed message verification processes. Reporters may use different emails providers.
Outdated keys may be rejected by automated systems, leading to communication disruptions.

Recommendation:
Generate a new OpenPGP key and replace the expired key.
Ensure periodic key rotation to prevent future expiration issues.

Mitigation
To mitigate this issue, organization should regularly update their encryption keys.
An organization should ensure that updates to their keys are propagated to all major servers.

Supporting Material/References:
CWE-320: Key Management Errors https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/320.html OWASP Top Ten 2013 Category A5 - Security Misconfiguration https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/933.html https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/815.html https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/310.html

I look forward to your response.
Best regards,

Closed by  cbay
04.04.2025 07:29
Reason for closing:  Invalid
Admin
cbay commented on 04.04.2025 07:29

Hello,

Thanks, we've updated our documentation to remove any reference to a GPG key as it was not actually used.

That's not a vulnerability, though.

Kind regards,
Cyril

Hello, my pleasure.
As mentioned above, on your security site, you strongly recommend using the referenced GPG key-which is currently invalid/expired.

This is a security issue: it directly impacts the confidentiality of encrypted messages and indirectly affects the product (for example, if the key is used to report security issues - in short, you gives expired key to use).

Consider a similar case: sending credentials over HTTP instead of HTTPS - it’s not always classified as a "vulnerability", but it is still a security weakness or misconfiguration.

Kind regards,

Admin
cbay commented on 04.04.2025 08:39
As mentioned above, on your security site, you strongly recommend using the referenced GPG key-which is currently invalid/expired.

No, not anymore.

This is a security issue: it directly impacts the confidentiality of encrypted messages and indirectly affects the product

Reports are already sent over HTTPS so can you describe a precise scenario where not using GPG would cause a security risk?

Happy to hear that. "No, not anymore." - if so, it's thanks to my effort / report. If not me, the bug (in this case, bug which leads to security issue) could still exist there. At least it's again reputation damage example. As we can see it was fixed already really quick.

In short, 'emails are unencrypted by default' (please remember, different senders = different emails providers too). I encourage you to familiarize yourself with GPG/PGP topic deeper - why is it used, for what, etc.

On your security site, you strongly recommended (past time - before needed fixes) using the referenced GPG key-which was that time invalid/expired since 2022y (today is 2025y).

Kind regards,

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