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Finicity Credentials

Finicity credentials are used to authenticate access to Finicity's financial data aggregation and insights services. These credentials are critical for accessing sensitive financial information, including bank account details and transaction histories. Exposure of these credentials poses a significant security risk, as unauthorized access could lead to data breaches, financial fraud, and misuse of personal financial data.

How Does It Look​

Finicity credentials can appear in various contexts, such as:

  • Environment variables:

    export FINICITY_API_KEY="f1n1c1tyAp1K3y123456"

  • Configuration files (JSON):

    {
      "finicity": {
        "apiKey": "f1n1c1tyAp1K3y123456"
      }
    }

  • Code snippets:

    finicity_api_key = "f1n1c1tyAp1K3y123456"

  • Connection strings:

    finicity://apiKey=f1n1c1tyAp1K3y123456@api.finicity.com

Severity​

  • 🔴 Critical

The severity of exposed Finicity credentials is critical because they provide access to sensitive financial data. Unauthorized access can lead to significant data breaches, financial fraud, and potential regulatory issues. The blast radius includes all financial data accessible via the compromised credentials, potentially affecting multiple users and accounts.

What Can an Attacker Do?​

With immediate access to Finicity credentials, an attacker can exploit the service to access sensitive financial data.

Key actions an attacker can perform:

  • Access financial data: Retrieve bank account details and transaction histories (if the credential has read permissions).
  • Modify financial records: Alter transaction data or account information (if write access is enabled).
  • Extract sensitive information: Download personal financial data for malicious use (if data export permissions are granted).
  • Conduct fraudulent transactions: Initiate unauthorized financial activities (if transaction initiation is permitted).

An attacker could potentially escalate their access by leveraging the compromised credentials to gain further insights into the financial ecosystem, potentially leading to lateral movement across other financial services.

Real-World Impact​

Exposure of Finicity credentials poses a significant business risk, primarily due to the sensitivity of financial data involved.

Potential consequences include:

  • Data Exposure: Personal and financial data of users (if the credential has read access to sensitive data).
  • Financial Loss: Unauthorized transactions or financial fraud (if transaction initiation is permitted).
  • Operational Disruption: Interruption of financial services (if the attacker has modify permissions).
  • Reputational Damage: Loss of trust and brand credibility due to data breaches.

In the worst-case scenario, the exposure could lead to cascading effects, including legal liabilities and long-term damage to customer relationships.

Prerequisites for Exploitation​

To exploit exposed Finicity credentials, an attacker needs:

  • Network access: Ability to connect to Finicity's API endpoints.
  • Additional context: Knowledge of specific account IDs or endpoints to target.
  • No rate limits: Exploitation is easier if there are no strict rate limits or IP restrictions in place.

How to Verify If It's Active​

To verify if a Finicity credential is active, use the following command:

curl -X GET "https://api.finicity.com/aggregation/v1/accounts" -H "Finicity-App-Key: [API_KEY]"

Valid credential response: A successful response will return account details in JSON format.

Invalid/expired credential response: An error message indicating authentication failure or invalid API key.

Detection Patterns​

Common Variable Names:

  • FINICITY_API_KEY
  • FINICITY_SECRET
  • FINICITY_KEY
  • FINICITY_TOKEN
  • FINICITY_APP_KEY
  • FINICITY_ACCESS_KEY

File Locations:

  • .env
  • config.json
  • settings.yaml
  • credentials.txt
  • appsettings.json

Regex Pattern:

finicity[_-]?(api|app|access)?[_-]?key['"]?\s*[:=]\s*['"]?[a-zA-Z0-9]{20,40}['"]?

Remediation Steps​

  1. Revoke immediately - Go to Finicity's developer portal and revoke the compromised API key.
  2. Audit access logs - Review Finicity access logs for unauthorized data access or transactions 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 API key in Finicity's developer portal 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 Finicity and require TLS connections.
  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​