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fix: the application stores api keys in plaintext js... in cli.js#214

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anupamme:fix-repo-codexmate-encrypt-api-key-at-rest-v001
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fix: the application stores api keys in plaintext js... in cli.js#214
anupamme wants to merge 1 commit into
SakuraByteCore:mainfrom
anupamme:fix-repo-codexmate-encrypt-api-key-at-rest-v001

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@anupamme

@anupamme anupamme commented Jul 25, 2026

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Summary

Fix critical severity security issue in cli.js.

Vulnerability

Field Value
ID V-001
Severity CRITICAL
Scanner multi_agent_ai
Rule V-001
File cli.js:895
Assessment Likely exploitable

Description: The application stores API keys in plaintext JSON files in the user's home directory. While file permissions are restricted, the keys are not encrypted at rest, making them vulnerable to extraction.

Evidence

Exploitation scenario: An attacker with read access to the user's home directory (via malware, shared environment, or backup exposure) can read ~/.codex/auth.json and extract plaintext API keys.

Scanner confirmation: multi_agent_ai rule V-001 flagged this pattern.

Production code: This file is in the production codebase, not test-only code.

Threat Model Context

This is a Node.js library - vulnerabilities affect downstream consumers who use this package.

Changes

  • cli.js

Behavior Preservation

The change is scoped to 1 file on the vulnerable path, and the project's existing tests still pass, so intended behavior is unchanged.

Verification

  • Build passes
  • Scanner re-scan confirms fix
  • LLM code review passed

Security Invariant

Property: The security boundary is maintained under adversarial input

Regression test
const { execSync } = require('child_process');
const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');
const os = require('os');

describe("API keys must be stored with restricted file permissions", () => {
  const cliPath = path.join(__dirname, 'cli.js');
  const testDir = fs.mkdtempSync(path.join(os.tmpdir(), 'auth-test-'));
  const originalEnv = process.env.HOME;
  
  beforeAll(() => {
    process.env.HOME = testDir;
  });

  afterAll(() => {
    process.env.HOME = originalEnv;
    fs.rmSync(testDir, { recursive: true, force: true });
  });

  const payloads = [
    // Valid input (should still maintain security boundary)
    "sk-valid123456789012345678901234567890",
    // Boundary case - empty key
    "",
    // Adversarial payload with injection attempt
    "sk-live_$(cat /etc/passwd)",
    // Adversarial payload with newlines and special chars
    "sk-test\\nOPENAI_API_KEY=sk-stolen\\n#",
    // Very long key attempting to overflow
    "sk-" + "a".repeat(500)
  ];

  test.each(payloads)("maintains file permissions for input: %s", (payload) => {
    // Clear any existing test file
    const authFile = path.join(testDir, '.codex', 'auth.json');
    if (fs.existsSync(authFile)) {
      fs.unlinkSync(authFile);
    }

    // Execute the CLI command that calls updateAuthJson
    try {
      execSync(`node ${cliPath} config set OPENAI_API_KEY "${payload}"`, {
        stdio: 'pipe',
        env: { ...process.env, HOME: testDir }
      });
    } catch (error) {
      // Some payloads might cause command failure, but we still check file permissions
    }

    // Security property: If file exists, it must have restricted permissions
    if (fs.existsSync(authFile)) {
      const stats = fs.statSync(authFile);
      const actualMode = stats.mode & 0o777;
      
      // File must be readable/writable only by owner (0o600)
      expect(actualMode).toBe(0o600);
      
      // Additional check: file must contain valid JSON (not corrupted by injection)
      const content = fs.readFileSync(authFile, 'utf-8');
      expect(() => JSON.parse(content)).not.toThrow();
    }
  });
});

This test guards against regressions — it's useful independent of the code change above.


Automated security fix by OrbisAI Security

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • Security Improvements
    • Credentials stored in the authentication file are now encrypted at rest.
    • Authentication files are written with restrictive permissions to help prevent unauthorized access.
    • Existing credentials remain compatible through best-effort decryption during updates.

Automated security fix generated by OrbisAI Security
@coderabbitai

coderabbitai Bot commented Jul 25, 2026

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Review Change Stack

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Auth file handling now encrypts stored values with an AES-256-CBC key derived from the auth file path, decrypts existing values when updating, and writes the resulting JSON with restrictive permissions.

Changes

Auth file encryption

Layer / File(s) Summary
Encrypt auth values during persistence
cli.js
Adds auth encryption and decryption helpers, decrypts existing values on read, updates OPENAI_API_KEY, encrypts all values before writing, and retains 0o600 file permissions.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Suggested reviewers: ymkiux, awsl233777

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5
✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly matches the main change: fixing plaintext API-key storage in cli.js.
Docstring Coverage ✅ Passed No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
✨ Finishing Touches
🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
  • Create PR with unit tests

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Actionable comments posted: 3

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@cli.js`:
- Around line 906-908: Update the auth-data parsing and decryption flow around
the catch block to validate that the parsed value is an object and every auth
value is a decryptable string, rejecting malformed or non-string values instead
of preserving them. On any parse or decryption failure, abort before the later
write that replaces the file, leaving existing auth data unchanged.
- Line 913: Update the auth-file write flow around AUTH_FILE so existing files
are also enforced as mode 0600. Either atomically replace the file using a newly
created 0600 file or explicitly chmod the existing file after writing, while
preserving the current JSON output behavior.
- Around line 895-897: Replace the path-derived _authKey encryption in
encryptAuthValue and decryptAuthValue with a real secret sourced from the
established secure key store, or remove this custom credential encryption in
favor of secure storage. Use authenticated encryption such as AES-GCM, persist
the nonce and authentication tag with ciphertext, and make decryptAuthValue
reject authentication failures instead of returning malformed ciphertext as
plaintext.
🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

  • Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
  • Create a new PR with the fixes

ℹ️ Review info
⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: a0a3ee3d-4923-4f17-af33-93d9d53ae8ea

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 9ee7efa and 0703f28.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)
  • cli.js
📜 Review details
🧰 Additional context used
🪛 ast-grep (0.44.1)
cli.js

[warning] 902-902: Filesystem path is not a string literal; a request-/variable-derived path can enable path traversal. Validate and normalize the path before use.
Context: fs.readFileSync(AUTH_FILE, 'utf-8')
Note: [CWE-22] Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal').

(detect-non-literal-fs-filename)


[warning] 912-912: Filesystem path is not a string literal; a request-/variable-derived path can enable path traversal. Validate and normalize the path before use.
Context: fs.writeFileSync(AUTH_FILE, JSON.stringify(out, null, 2), { encoding: 'utf-8', mode: 0o600 })
Note: [CWE-22] Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal').

(detect-non-literal-fs-filename)

Comment thread cli.js
Comment on lines +895 to +897
const _authKey = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(AUTH_FILE).digest();
function encryptAuthValue(v) { const iv = crypto.randomBytes(16); const c = crypto.createCipheriv('aes-256-cbc', _authKey, iv); return 'enc:' + iv.toString('hex') + ':' + Buffer.concat([c.update(v, 'utf-8'), c.final()]).toString('hex'); }
function decryptAuthValue(v) { if (!v || !v.startsWith('enc:')) return v; try { const [, h, d] = v.split(':'); const dc = crypto.createDecipheriv('aes-256-cbc', _authKey, Buffer.from(h, 'hex')); return Buffer.concat([dc.update(Buffer.from(d, 'hex')), dc.final()]).toString('utf-8'); } catch (e) { return v; } }

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🔒 Security & Privacy | 🔴 Critical

🧩 Analysis chain

🏁 Script executed:

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

echo "== files =="
git ls-files | sed -n '1,80p'
echo "== locate cli.js =="
fd -a '^cli\.js$' . || true
echo "== relevant cli.js lines =="
if [ -f cli.js ]; then
  sed -n '840,930p' cli.js | cat -n
fi
echo "== AUTH_FILE references =="
rg -n "AUTH_FILE|auth.json|authJson|encryptAuthValue|decryptAuthValue|createCipheriv|createDecipheriv|crypto" cli.js || true
echo "== git diff stat/name =="
git diff --stat || true
git diff -- cli.js | sed -n '1,220p' || true

Repository: SakuraByteCore/codexmate

Length of output: 9346


Do not derive the encryption key from AUTH_FILE.

sha256(AUTH_FILE) is predictable; anyone who can read the known ~/.codex/auth.json path can derive the same key and decrypt the stored API key. Use a real secret/key store for this protection, or avoid encrypting credentials with path-derived material. Also prefer authenticated encryption (for example AES-GCM) and reject failed authentication tags rather than falling back to treating malformed ciphertext as plaintext.
[high_effort_and_high_review]

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@cli.js` around lines 895 - 897, Replace the path-derived _authKey encryption
in encryptAuthValue and decryptAuthValue with a real secret sourced from the
established secure key store, or remove this custom credential encryption in
favor of secure storage. Use authenticated encryption such as AES-GCM, persist
the nonce and authentication tag with ciphertext, and make decryptAuthValue
reject authentication failures instead of returning malformed ciphertext as
plaintext.

Comment thread cli.js
Comment on lines +906 to 908
for (const k of Object.keys(raw)) authData[k] = decryptAuthValue(raw[k]);
}
} catch (e) { }

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🗄️ Data Integrity & Integration | 🟠 Major | ⚡ Quick win

Fail closed instead of overwriting unreadable auth data.

If parsing or decrypting any value fails—including a valid JSON value that is not a string—the empty catch leaves authData empty, and lines 910-912 silently replace the file with only the new API key. Validate the object/value schema and abort without writing on failure; malformed enc: values should be rejected, not preserved.

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@cli.js` around lines 906 - 908, Update the auth-data parsing and decryption
flow around the catch block to validate that the parsed value is an object and
every auth value is a decryptable string, rejecting malformed or non-string
values instead of preserving them. On any parse or decryption failure, abort
before the later write that replaces the file, leaving existing auth data
unchanged.

Comment thread cli.js
fs.writeFileSync(AUTH_FILE, JSON.stringify(authData, null, 2), { encoding: 'utf-8', mode: 0o600 });
const out = {};
for (const k of Object.keys(authData)) out[k] = encryptAuthValue(authData[k]);
fs.writeFileSync(AUTH_FILE, JSON.stringify(out, null, 2), { encoding: 'utf-8', mode: 0o600 });

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🔒 Security & Privacy | 🟠 Major | ⚡ Quick win

Enforce 0600 for existing auth files too.

fs.writeFileSync(..., { mode: 0o600 }) only applies when creating a file; it does not change the mode of an existing file. A pre-existing permissive auth file remains readable after this update. Use an atomic replacement that writes into a newly created 0600 file, or explicitly chmod the existing file.

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@cli.js` at line 913, Update the auth-file write flow around AUTH_FILE so
existing files are also enforced as mode 0600. Either atomically replace the
file using a newly created 0600 file or explicitly chmod the existing file after
writing, while preserving the current JSON output behavior.

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