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GHSA-mr45-rx8q-wcm9

HighCVSS 7.5 / 10
Published Oct 31, 2023·Last modified Feb 4, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Background

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.

Problem Description

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.

Affected versions

nkeys Go library:

  • 0.4.0 up to and including 0.4.5
  • Fixed with nats-io/nkeys: 0.4.6

NATS Server:

  • 2.10.0 up to and including 2.10.3
  • Fixed with nats-io/nats-server: 2.10.4

Solution

Upgrade the nats-server.
For any application handling auth callouts in Go, if using the nkeys library, update the dependency, recompile and deploy that in lockstep.

Credits

Problem reported by Quentin Matillat (GitHub @tinou98).

Risk Scores
Base Score
7.5

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information.

Threat Intelligence
6.9

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
0.37%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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