CVE-2023-46129xkeys Seal encryption used fixed key for all encryption
- 7.5HighCVSS base score
- 0.45%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 61% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
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.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 14 days later
· 14 days later
Published
- 16 months later
· 16 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.45% · top 61% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Affected products
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Gogithub.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2GHSA-mr45-rx8q-wcm9 (opens in a new tab)
- Gogithub.com/nats-io/nkeysGHSA-mr45-rx8q-wcm9 (opens in a new tab)
References
References4
- https://github.com/nats-io/nkeys/security/advisories/GHSA-mr45-rx8q-wcm9 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/10/31/1 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/ULQQONMSCQSH5Z5OWFFQHCGEZ3NL4DRJ/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/R3UETKPUB3V5JS5TLZOF3SMTGT5K5APS/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2023-2780 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-mr45-rx8q-wcm9 (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2023-46129)Record last updated .