HAX CMS helps manage microsite universe with PHP or NodeJs backends. Prior to version 26.0.0, the hmacBase64() function in the HAXcms Node.js backend contains two critical cryptographic implementation errors that together allow any unauthenticated attacker to extract the system’s private signing key and forge arbitrary admin-level JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) allowing them to get full admin access with a single HTTP request. First, the function passes the literal string "0" as the HMAC signing key instead of the key parameter, making every HAXcms instance compute identical HMACs for the same input.

Then, after computing the HMAC, the function concatenates the real key parameter which is "this.privateKey + this.salt", the system’s master signing secret is directly onto the output. The combined buffer is base64-encoded and returned as the token. Every base64url token produced has the same structure: 32 bytes HMAC keyed with "0" and N bytes of privateKey+salt.

An attacker base64-decodes any token, discards the first 32 bytes, and reads the private key directly. The /system/api/connectionSettings endpoint is unauthenticated and returns multiple tokens generated by this function. A single GET request to this endpoint exposes the private key.

The PHP backend implements this function correctly with the actual key and returns only the hash. The PHP version produces 44-character tokens whereas the broken Node.js version produces 139+ character tokens. Version 26.0.0 fixes the issue.