vantage6 is an open-source infrastructure for privacy preserving analysis. The JWT secret key in the vantage6 server is auto-generated unless defined by the user. The auto-generated key is a UUID1, which is not cryptographically secure as it is predictable to some extent. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.11.0.
Weakness
The product uses insufficiently random numbers or values in a security context that depends on unpredictable numbers.
Potential Mitigations
- Use a well-vetted algorithm that is currently considered to be strong by experts in the field, and select well-tested implementations with adequate length seeds.
- In general, if a pseudo-random number generator is not advertised as being cryptographically secure, then it is probably a statistical PRNG and should not be used in security-sensitive contexts.
- Pseudo-random number generators can produce predictable numbers if the generator is known and the seed can be guessed. A 256-bit seed is a good starting point for producing a “random enough” number.
References