Is this vulnerability remotely exploitable?

Yes. If the Covenant admin interface or relevant APIs are exposed over the network and the JWT signing secret is predictable or compromised, an attacker can remotely forge admin tokens and achieve remote code execution.

What level of access does an attacker need to exploit this?

The attacker needs network access to the Covenant management interface or API and the ability to reconstruct or obtain a valid signing key (or otherwise bypass signature verification). With that, they can generate admin-privileged JWTs without prior valid credentials.

What is the safest general fix pattern?

Move all JWT signing keys and similar secrets out of source code and default configs into secure secret management, ensure they are strong, unique per deployment, and rotate them when compromised. Combine this with strict authorization checks on admin functionality and careful restriction of code-upload and execution features.

Severity:

CRITICAL RISK

(9.8)

Hard-coded Administrative Secret (CWE-798) Enabling RCE in Covenant C2 Platform

CVE-2020-36911

Published:

Jan 13, 2026

Status:

Analyzed

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

NDV

Recent Vulnerabilities

CWE-306

CRITICAL RISK

CRITICAL

(9.8)

Missing Authentication for Forgot-Password Email Change API (CWE-306)

Account Takeover / Loss of Account Control

February 17, 2026

CWE-77;CWE-78

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(7.3)

OS Command Injection (CWE-78) in node-sonos-http-api TTS Provider for macOS

Remote Code Execution on the Server Host

February 17, 2026

Vulnerability Type

Category:

Authentication Bypass / Hard-coded Secrets

CWE:

CWE-798

Impact:

Remote Code Execution with Administrative Privileges

Severity:

CRITICAL RISK

(9.8)

CVSS Version:

3.1

Vulnerability Type

Category:

Authentication Bypass / Hard-coded Secrets

CWE:

CWE-798

Impact:

Remote Code Execution with Administrative Privileges

Severity:

CRITICAL RISK

(9.8)

CVSS Version:

3.1

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355 Bryant St. San Francisco, CA 94107, USA

Ask AI for summary of CodeAnt

Hard-coded Administrative Secret (CWE-798) Enabling RCE in Covenant C2 Platform

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

Recent Vulnerabilities

CRITICAL RISK

CRITICAL

(9.8)

Missing Authentication for Forgot-Password Email Change API (CWE-306)

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(7.3)

OS Command Injection (CWE-78) in node-sonos-http-api TTS Provider for macOS

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Catch This CVE While Code Is Being Written

Ship clean & secure code faster

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