🔐 The JWT secret disaster

Cryptographic failures

Your monitoring alerts you to unusual admin activity at 3 AM - someone is creating and deleting user accounts rapidly.

You check the logs and see valid JWT admin tokens being used, but none of your admin team is awake.

Investigating further, you discover someone has cracked your JWT signing secret - it was just 'secret123'.

They're now generating their own admin tokens and have full access to customer data, financial records, and system controls.

Technical Issue: Your JWT tokens are signed with a weak, easily guessable secret key. Attackers used brute force tools to crack the secret and can now forge valid JWT tokens with any permissions they want, including admin access.

What's your immediate first move?

Immediately generate a new strong JWT secret

Create a cryptographically secure signing key and invalidate all existing tokens

Revoke all current admin tokens immediately

Invalidate admin access while keeping regular user tokens active

Set very short expiration times on all JWT tokens

Force frequent re-authentication to limit damage

Implement monitoring to detect forged tokens

Add alerts for suspicious token usage patterns

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