fix: remove activation_key from account REST API response#830
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Kelketek merged 1 commit intoopencraft-release/sumac.1-krach-institutefrom Apr 2, 2026
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cherry-pick from upstream: openedx#38241 The activation_key field was exposed in /api/user/v1/accounts/{username}, allowing an attacker to bypass email verification by combining two behaviors: 1. OAuth2 password grant issues tokens to inactive users (intentional) 2. activation_key returned in API response (the vulnerability) An attacker could register, get an OAuth2 token, read the activation_key from the API, then GET /activate/{key} to activate without email access. Fix: remove activation_key from UserReadOnlySerializer.to_representation() and from ACCOUNT_VISIBILITY_CONFIGURATION["admin_fields"] (which controls the field whitelist in _filter_fields — listed fields default to None even if absent from the serializer data dict). Reported by Daniel Baillo via the Open edX security working group. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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@Kelketek 👍 Thanks!
- I tested this: checked this matches the upstream patch, checked it appears to apply cleanly, checked that the failing tests aren't related (although some tests are still to complete, something in github is down; we can re-run the tests soon hopefully)
- I read through the code
- I checked for accessibility issues
- Includes documentation
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cherry-pick from upstream: openedx#38241
The activation_key field was exposed in /api/user/v1/accounts/{username}, allowing an attacker to bypass email verification by combining two behaviors:
An attacker could register, get an OAuth2 token, read the activation_key from the API, then GET /activate/{key} to activate without email access.
Fix: remove activation_key from UserReadOnlySerializer.to_representation() and from ACCOUNT_VISIBILITY_CONFIGURATION["admin_fields"] (which controls the field whitelist in _filter_fields — listed fields default to None even if absent from the serializer data dict).
Reported by Daniel Baillo via the Open edX security working group.