Executive brief
openssl-encrypt is a Python library that manages cryptographic keys via a keyserver. When run with debug logging enabled, the library fails to redact authentication tokens, causing them to be written in plaintext to logs and terminal history. An attacker with access to logs, terminal history, or error output could capture these credentials and authenticate to the keyserver.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an information disclosure (CWE-532) caused by insufficient sanitization of debug output. The `sanitize_argv_for_debug` function fails to redact the keyserver bearer token passed as a positional argument to the `keyserver set-token` command. As a result, when the application runs with the `--debug` flag, the token is printed in cleartext to stderr even without `--unsafe-show-secrets` being specified. This persists credentials in shell history and log files. The vulnerability affects versions <= 1.4.8 and was fixed in version 1.4.9 by routing the positional token through the debug_secret redaction mechanism.
Affected products
- jahlives openssl-encrypt <=1.4.8
Timeline
- 2026-08-12: disclosed
- 2026-08-27: patched: Version 1.4.9 released with fix