Description

Insufficiently Protected Credentials vulnerability in Apache Syncope. Audit events, when sent to the configured store, are not sufficiently masked for the sensitive values they might carry on their payloads, thus allowing administrators to access such sensitive values. This issue affects Apache Syncope: from 3.0.0-M0 through 3.0.16, from 4.0.0-M0 Through 4.0.7, from 4.1.0-M0 through 4.1.2. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 4.0.8 / 4.1.3, which fix this issue.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "4.9",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-14T13:18:45.860Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-14T13:18:45.860Z",
  "executiveSummary": "Apache Syncope contains an 'Insufficiently Protected Credentials' vulnerability where audit logs fail to adequately mask sensitive payload data.\nThis security flaw allows unauthorized retrieval of plaintext credentials and sensitive information by users with administrative access to the audit log store.\nThe vulnerability affects Apache Syncope versions 3.0.0-M0 through 3.0.16, 4.0.0-M0 through 4.0.7, and 4.1.0-M0 through 4.1.2.\nSuccessful exploitation poses a significant risk to data confidentiality and systemic integrity, as privileged users can inadvertently or maliciously access credential material stored in the audit trail.\nThe vulnerability is primarily an internal security failure within the logging subsystem, where the lack of sanitization routines for sensitive data fields results in the persistence of plain-text secrets.\nThere are no specific external network requirements for exploitation, as the risk is localized to the internal log persistence mechanism; however, the impact is severe due to the potential for credential harvesting and privilege escalation by authorized administrators.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability originates from the audit logging mechanism within Apache Syncope, which captures transaction payloads before they are serialized and persisted to the configured audit store. The root cause is a failure in the sanitization logic or the absence of masking filters for sensitive data structures within these payloads.\nWhen an audit event is triggered, the system extracts the request payload, which frequently contains authentication tokens, passwords, or configuration secrets. Because the logging framework treats these payloads as generic objects for persistence, sensitive fields are stored in plaintext within the backend database or log file.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: First, a user performs an operation (e.g., identity lifecycle management or credential update) that triggers an audit event. The Apache Syncope audit component captures the full request object. Second, the system processes this object for storage, omitting the necessary transformations to scrub or mask sensitive parameters. Third, the unmasked payload is committed to the audit store. Finally, an administrator with access to the auditing module or direct read access to the underlying storage medium (e.g., SQL database or log aggregation platform) can query the audit logs and recover the plaintext credentials.\nThis issue is particularly critical because audit logs are often retained for long periods and may be mirrored to centralized logging infrastructure (like ELK or Splunk), potentially exposing credentials to a wider circle of personnel than intended. The vulnerability does not require complex exploit code; it relies on the inherent design flaw in how the application handles data sensitive to security and privacy during the auditing process.\nAffected versions include Apache Syncope 3.0.0-M0 through 3.0.16, 4.0.0-M0 through 4.0.7, and 4.1.0-M0 through 4.1.2. The vulnerability persists regardless of the underlying audit store implementation, as the failure occurs at the application level during the capture and serialization phase, before the data is transmitted to the storage destination."
}