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Hard-coded credentials

ID: go/hardcoded-credentials
Kind: problem
Security severity: 9.8
Severity: warning
Precision: medium
Tags:
   - security
   - external/cwe/cwe-259
   - external/cwe/cwe-321
   - external/cwe/cwe-798
Query suites:
   - go-security-extended.qls
   - go-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

Including unencrypted hard-coded authentication credentials in source code is dangerous because the credentials may be easily discovered. For example, the code may be open source, or it may be leaked or accidentally revealed, making the credentials visible to an attacker. This, in turn, might enable them to gain unauthorized access, or to obtain privileged information.

Recommendation

Remove hard-coded credentials, such as user names, passwords and certificates, from source code. Instead, place them in configuration files, environment variables or other data stores if necessary. If possible, store configuration files including credential data separately from the source code, in a secure location with restricted access.

Example

The following code example connects to a Postgres database using the lib/pq package and hard-codes user name and password:

package main

import (
	"database/sql"
	"fmt"

	_ "github.com/lib/pq"
)

const (
	user     = "dbuser"
	password = "s3cretp4ssword"
)

func connect() *sql.DB {
	connStr := fmt.Sprintf("postgres://%s:%s@localhost/pqgotest", user, password)
	db, err := sql.Open("postgres", connStr)
	if err != nil {
		return nil
	}
	return db
}

Instead, user name and password can be supplied through the environment variables PGUSER and PGPASSWORD, which can be set externally without hard-coding credentials in the source code.

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