Contrast's unauthenticated recovery allows Coordinator impersonation

### Impact Recovering coordinators do not verify the seed provided by the recovering party. This allows an attacker to set up a coordinator with a manifest that passes validation, but with a secret seed controlled by the attacker. If network traffic is redirected from the legitimate coordinator to the attacker's coordinator, a workload owner is susceptible to impersonation if either * they `set` a new manifest and don't compare the root CA cert with the existing one (this is the default of the `contrast` CLI) or * they `verify` the coordinator and don't compare the root CA cert with a trusted reference. Under these circumstances, the attacker can: * Issue certificates that chain back to the attacker coordinator's root CA. * Recover arbitrary workload secrets of workloads deployed after the attack. This issue does **not** affect the following: * secrets of the legitimate coordinator (seed, workload secrets, CA) * integrity of workloads, even when used with the rogue coordinator * certificates chaining back to the mesh CA ### Patches This issue is patched in Contrast v1.4.1. ### Workarounds The issue can be avoided by verifying the coordinator root CA cert against expectations. * At the first `set` call, keep a copy of the CA cert returned by the coordinator. * After subsequent `set` or `verify` calls, compare the returned CA cert with the backup copy. If it matches bit-for-bit, the coordinator is legitimate.

Source published

5 Feb 2025 21:30:35 UTC

Source modified

27 Sep 2026 11:55:52 UTC

Observed here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC

Source terms

GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

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CVSS_V3 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N

Publisher rating · HIGH