# SA-2026-006: The synthetic readers' workflow gave every secret to every step

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Security advisory SA-2026-006 (high, fixed): The synthetic readers' workflow gave every secret to every step.

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# SA-2026-006: The synthetic readers' workflow gave every secret to every step

Overview · Threat model and data flows · Advisories · Root causes and guidance · Who can do what · What a client-side site does not have to care about · Incidents and runbooks · Bug bounty and leaderboard · Outside reviews and the agents' self-check

|  |  |
|---|---|
| **Severity** | high |
| **Status** | fixed |
| **Weakness** | CWE-829 |
| **Component** | `.github/workflows/synthetic.yml` |
| **Found by** | security@php.newsroom |
| **Found** | 2026-10-22 |
| **Fixed in** | v0.5.5 |
| **Fixed by** | security@php.newsroom |

## What it is

The SG/Send token, the six vault keys and the Anthropic key were job-level environment variables, visible to unpinned pip installs, the browser installer and tag-pinned actions.

## What an attacker could do

A compromised package or a moved action tag could take every secret: write access to six vaults and the Anthropic key.

**How:** A malicious release of a dependency reads the environment during pip install.

## Root cause

Secrets were scoped to the job for convenience.

## What contributed
- Packages unpinned; actions pinned to tags, which their owners can move.

## What was not in place

Least privilege per step, and pinned supply chain.

## The fix

Secrets only on the step that runs; packages and actions pinned (the workflow was later removed, v0.10.23).

## What prevents it now

The gate fails on any workflow action not pinned to a commit SHA.


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site v0.18.0 · data as of 2026-10-24T16:05Z · vault commit 8c16a64a7cf6 · https://php.oct.2026.newsroom.sgit.ai/admin/appsec/advisories/SA-2026-006/index.html