SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower submission system that media organizations can use to securely accept documents from, and communicate with anonymous sources. From 2.13.0 until 2.16.1, running the securedrop-admin install Ansible playbook with journalist alerts disabled leaves the journalist alert key filename empty, causing the copy task to transfer every file in ~/.config/securedrop-admin/, including Onion Service client authentication credentials, to the Monitor Server. An attacker must first compromise the privileged Monitor Server to obtain the credentials, and the credentials remain an additional protection layer rather than sufficient access by themselves because the Journalist Interface still requires a username, passphrase, and MFA, while SSH access still requires SSH keys. This issue is fixed in version 2.16.1.
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Fixes

Solution

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Workaround

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History

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 21:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower submission system that media organizations can use to securely accept documents from, and communicate with anonymous sources. From 2.13.0 until 2.16.1, running the securedrop-admin install Ansible playbook with journalist alerts disabled leaves the journalist alert key filename empty, causing the copy task to transfer every file in ~/.config/securedrop-admin/, including Onion Service client authentication credentials, to the Monitor Server. An attacker must first compromise the privileged Monitor Server to obtain the credentials, and the credentials remain an additional protection layer rather than sufficient access by themselves because the Journalist Interface still requires a username, passphrase, and MFA, while SSH access still requires SSH keys. This issue is fixed in version 2.16.1.
Title SecureDrop: Onion Service client auth credentials copied to Monitor Server
Weaknesses CWE-201
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 2.6, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N'}


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-11-06T20:58:10.211Z

Reserved: 2026-08-07T18:26:53.524Z

Link: CVE-2026-71863

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-11-06T21:17:10.713

Modified: 2026-11-06T21:17:10.713

Link: CVE-2026-71863

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-11-06T22:30:12Z

Weaknesses