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The JWT signing secret was hardcoded to the literal string "random" - a trivially guessable/brute-forceable key, letting an attacker forge arbitrary valid auth tokens (including for the admin account) entirely offline, without ever needing valid credentials. Replaced it with a securely random 256-bit key generated via secrets.token_hex(32) at process start, with an optional SECRET_KEY environment variable override for deployments that want to pin a fixed key (e.g. across multiple app instances). Verified live: normal login/auth still works end-to-end (login as "name1", use the returned token against /me). Forged a token signed with the old hardcoded secret "random" for the admin user using PyJWT directly - the app now rejects it with "Invalid token. Please log in again." instead of accepting it as a valid admin session. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
🏆 VAmPI — CTF Patch Score1 / 9 challenges patched
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Summary
The JWT signing secret was hardcoded to the literal string
"random"- trivially guessable, letting an attacker forge arbitrary valid tokens (including admin) entirely offline. Replaced with a securely random 256-bit key generated at process start (with an optionalSECRET_KEYenv var override).Test plan
"random"for the admin user is now rejected with "Invalid token. Please log in again."