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Coze Personal Access Token

A Coze Personal Access Token is a credential used to authenticate and authorize access to Coze's API services. These tokens are typically used by developers to interact with Coze's platform programmatically, allowing actions such as data retrieval, updates, and service management. Exposure of a Personal Access Token is a significant security concern because it can grant unauthorized users access to sensitive data and operations within the Coze environment, potentially leading to data breaches or service disruptions.

How Does It Look​

Personal Access Tokens can appear in various contexts, such as:

  • Environment variables:

    export COZE_TOKEN="coze_12345abcde"

  • Configuration files (JSON, YAML, .env):

    {
      "cozeToken": "coze_12345abcde"
    }
    coze_token: coze_12345abcde

  • Code snippets:

    coze_token = "coze_12345abcde"

  • Connection strings:

    coze://api.coze.com?token=coze_12345abcde

Severity​

  • 🔴 Critical

This severity level is due to the broad access that a Coze Personal Access Token can provide. Depending on its permissions, the token can allow full access to Coze's API, including reading, writing, and deleting data. The blast radius of such exposure can be extensive, affecting all services and data accessible via the token.

What Can an Attacker Do?​

With immediate access to a Coze Personal Access Token, an attacker can perform various malicious activities:

An attacker can immediately access Coze's API, potentially leading to unauthorized data access and manipulation.

Key actions an attacker can perform:

  • Delete or modify data (if the credential has write permissions)
  • Access sensitive information (if the token has read permissions to confidential data)
  • Spin up resources (if the token allows resource creation, leading to potential abuse like cryptomining)
  • Access billing information (if the account has billing scope enabled)

Additionally, an attacker could use the token to escalate privileges or move laterally within the Coze environment, potentially compromising other connected systems or services.

Real-World Impact​

Exposure of a Coze Personal Access Token poses significant business risks, including:

The primary impact is unauthorized access to sensitive data and services, which can lead to severe consequences.

Potential consequences include:

  • Data Exposure: Sensitive customer or business data (if the credential has read access to sensitive data)
  • Financial Loss: Unauthorized resource usage leading to increased costs (if billing/resource creation is permitted)
  • Operational Disruption: Service outages or data integrity issues (if the attacker has delete/modify permissions)
  • Reputational Damage: Loss of customer trust and brand reputation

In worst-case scenarios, the exposure could lead to cascading effects, such as widespread data breaches or prolonged service outages, severely impacting business operations.

Prerequisites for Exploitation​

To exploit a Coze Personal Access Token, an attacker needs:

  • Network access to Coze's API endpoints
  • Knowledge of API endpoints and any required account IDs
  • Bypassing rate limits or restrictions that might be in place

How to Verify If It's Active​

To verify if a Coze Personal Access Token is active, use the following command:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer [TOKEN]" https://api.coze.com/v1/status

Valid credential response: A successful response will return a status message indicating active service access, such as {"status":"active"}.

Invalid/expired credential response: An error message indicating unauthorized access, such as {"error":"invalid_token"}.

Detection Patterns​

Common Variable Names:

  • COZE_TOKEN
  • cozeToken
  • COZE_API_KEY
  • cozeApiKey
  • COZE_ACCESS_TOKEN
  • cozeAccessToken

File Locations:

  • .env
  • config.json
  • settings.yaml
  • credentials.py
  • app.config

Regex Pattern:

coze_[a-zA-Z0-9]{10,}

Remediation Steps​

  1. Revoke immediately - Go to Coze Dashboard > Security > API Tokens and delete the compromised token.
  2. Audit access logs - Review Coze API logs for unauthorized access or actions during the exposure window.
  3. Assess blast radius - Identify all systems, applications, and environments that used the exposed credential.
  4. Rotate credential - Generate a new Personal Access Token in Coze Dashboard with least-privilege permissions.
  5. Update dependent systems - Deploy the new credential to all applications and update CI/CD pipelines securely.
  6. Harden access controls - Enable IP allowlisting in Coze and require TLS connections for API access.
  7. Implement secrets management - Migrate credentials to a secrets manager (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager) to prevent hardcoding.
  8. Add detection controls - Set up pre-commit hooks and repository scanning to catch credential leaks before they reach production.

Credential exposures often go undetected for extended periods, increasing the window for exploitation. As a long-term strategy, plan to establish an internal process or engage an external vendor for continuous external exposure monitoring. This helps identify leaked secrets across public repositories, paste sites, dark web forums, and other external sources before attackers can leverage them. Proactive detection and rapid response are essential to minimizing the impact of credential leaks.

References​