Critical Data Breach Exposed: A Deep Dive into a Government Agency’s Security Flaw (Part 2)

Hey, it’s Adnan from Tamil Nadu! 🌍

In the first part of this series, I shared how I uncovered a serious vulnerability in a government agency’s system using credentials leaked from a compromised Grafana server. If you missed that, go check it out! In this part, I’m going to dive deeper into how I gained full access to the organization’s admin panel without even needing the password! 😲

Here’s how I pieced it all together and took over the system. Let’s get started!

After getting the organization ID from the Grafana breach, I realized I still didn’t have the admin password. But instead of stopping there, I decided to investigate how the login process worked.

Using Burp Suite, I captured login requests and responses from staff credentials I found in the breach. By analyzing these, I figured out that the system relied on JWT (JSON Web Token) for authentication. This was a game-changer. 🕵️‍♂️

Next, I simulated a login using the staff credentials I had. Since I didn’t know the passwords, I deliberately used an incorrect password with the correct username. The server returned an error, but through Burp Suite, I captured how it handled the JWT response.

Even though the login failed, the error response gave me valuable clues on how the JWT was structured. I could now use this to create my own payload.

With the JWT structure in hand, I decided to forge my own JWT. JWTs are signed by the server and contain data about the user, such as roles and access levels. Here’s what I did:

I signed the JWT with a weak key derived from information in the breach. Now I had my fake JWT ready for action! 🎯

Here came the tricky part. I intercepted the server’s error response when logging in with the wrong password and used Burp Suite to replace it with my forged JWT.

By doing this, I bypassed the password check and sent the fake JWT to the server, tricking it into thinking it was a valid token.

Once I sent the modified request, I crossed my fingers and waited. The server accepted the forged JWT, and I was granted admin access to the system! 🏆

Without even knowing the password, I had full control over the admin panel. 💻

From the admin panel, I had access to everything. I could:

I could change almost anything within the system, which showed how deeply flawed the security setup was.

This breach exposed major security flaws in the government agency’s system:

Here’s what the agency could have done to prevent this:

This breach is a reminder of how small security flaws can escalate into something much bigger. While this exploration uncovered major weaknesses, it’s important to note that such activities are illegal without permission. My goal here is to raise awareness about the importance of robust security measures.

If you’re in charge of system security or work in IT, make sure your organization is fully secured — from authentication to server configuration. Cybersecurity is not a one-time task — it’s a continuous process. 🔐

Stay vigilant,
Adnan 🌐