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Salesforce Credentials

Salesforce credentials are used to authenticate users and applications to the Salesforce platform, which is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) service. These credentials can include usernames, passwords, OAuth tokens, and API keys that grant access to Salesforce's extensive suite of tools for managing customer data, sales processes, and business analytics. Exposure of these credentials poses a significant security risk as it could lead to unauthorized access to sensitive customer information, financial data, and business operations.

How Does It Look​

Salesforce credentials can appear in various contexts, such as:

  • Environment variables:

    export SALESFORCE_API_KEY="sf_api_key_123456"
    export SALESFORCE_SECRET="sf_secret_abcdef"

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

    {
      "salesforce": {
        "username": "user@example.com",
        "password": "password123",
        "token": "00Dxx0000001gPFEAY"
      }
    }

  • Code snippets:

    import requests

    response = requests.post(
        "https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token",
        data={
            "grant_type": "password",
            "client_id": "3MVG9lKcPoNINVBIPJjdw",
            "client_secret": "secret123",
            "username": "user@example.com",
            "password": "password123"
        }
    )

  • Connection strings:

    salesforce://user@example.com:password123@instance.salesforce.com

Severity​

  • 🔴 Critical

Salesforce credentials are considered critical because they can provide access to a wide range of sensitive data and functionalities within the Salesforce platform. Unauthorized access could lead to data breaches, financial loss, and operational disruptions, affecting both the organization and its customers.

What Can an Attacker Do?​

With immediate access to Salesforce credentials, an attacker can perform a variety of malicious actions:

An attacker can quickly gain access to sensitive customer data, financial records, and internal business processes.

Key actions an attacker can perform:

  • Delete or modify data: Alter customer records or sales data (if the credential has write permissions).
  • Access billing information: View or change billing details (if the account has billing scope enabled).
  • Spin up resources: Create or modify Salesforce applications and integrations (if administrative permissions are granted).
  • Exfiltrate sensitive data: Download customer lists, sales forecasts, and other proprietary information.

Additionally, an attacker could use the compromised credentials to escalate privileges within the Salesforce environment or move laterally to other connected systems, potentially compromising more of the organization's infrastructure.

Real-World Impact​

The exposure of Salesforce credentials poses significant business risks, including:

Unauthorized access to Salesforce can lead to severe consequences for an organization.

Potential consequences include:

  • Data Exposure: Customer contact details, sales data, and proprietary business information (if the credential has read access to sensitive data).
  • Financial Loss: Unauthorized transactions or resource usage (if billing/resource creation is permitted).
  • Operational Disruption: Interruption of sales processes and customer service operations (if the attacker has delete/modify permissions).
  • Reputational Damage: Loss of customer trust and brand integrity.

In the worst-case scenario, the exposure could lead to cascading effects, such as regulatory scrutiny, legal action, and long-term damage to the organization's market position.

Prerequisites for Exploitation​

To exploit exposed Salesforce credentials, an attacker would need:

  • Network access: Ability to connect to the Salesforce API endpoints.
  • Additional context: Knowledge of the specific Salesforce instance or account details.
  • Rate limits: Awareness of any API rate limits or restrictions that could impede large-scale data extraction.

How to Verify If It's Active​

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

curl -X POST https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token \
  -d "grant_type=password" \
  -d "client_id=[CLIENT_ID]" \
  -d "client_secret=[CLIENT_SECRET]" \
  -d "username=[USERNAME]" \
  -d "password=[PASSWORD]"

Valid credential response: A successful response will include an access token and instance URL.

Invalid/expired credential response: An error message indicating invalid credentials or expired token.

Detection Patterns​

Common Variable Names:

  • SALESFORCE_API_KEY
  • SALESFORCE_SECRET
  • SALESFORCE_USERNAME
  • SALESFORCE_PASSWORD
  • SALESFORCE_TOKEN
  • SF_CLIENT_ID

File Locations:

  • config/salesforce.json
  • .env
  • src/config.yaml
  • credentials/salesforce.env

Regex Pattern:

(?i)(salesforce|sf)_?(api|client|secret|token|key|password|username)[\s]*[:=][\s]*["']?[a-zA-Z0-9_\-]+["']?

Remediation Steps​

  1. Revoke immediately - Go to Salesforce Setup > Users > Users and deactivate the compromised user account.
  2. Audit access logs - Review Salesforce login history and event monitoring logs for unauthorized access attempts during the exposure window.
  3. Assess blast radius - Identify all systems, applications, and environments that used the exposed credential.
  4. Rotate credential - Create a new user or API token in Salesforce 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 restrictions and enforce two-factor authentication in Salesforce.
  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​