better-auth: OAuth Proxy lets an attacker sign in as another user

Overview

Am I affected?

You may be affected if you use better-auth from 1.5.0-beta.12 through versions before 1.7.7 with the OAuth Proxy plugin. You are affected only if all of these are also true:

• On a participating environment, the OAuth Proxy plugin has no dedicated secret, or its secret equals that environment's global Better Auth secret.
• Sign-in state is stored in a cookie (account.storeStateStrategy: "cookie"). With a database or secondary storage, this is only the case if you chose it explicitly.
• Implicit account linking is on (the default).

You are not affected by this path if every participating environment uses a proxy secret distinct from its global Better Auth secret, if sign-in state is stored in the database, or if you use a version before 1.5.0-beta.12.

Summary

The OAuth Proxy plugin trusts any user profile it can decrypt. In the affected setup, Better Auth encrypts sign-in state, including data the caller chose, with the same secret and hands it to anyone who starts a social sign-in. An attacker can use this to get a fake profile for another user's email address that the proxy accepts as real.

Impact

An attacker without an account who knows a user's verified email address can sign in as that user, with that user's permissions. They can read private data, change the account, and link a provider account of their choice to it. They need no provider sign-in and no action from the victim. No availability impact is established, and a reported open redirect was not confirmed.

Patches

The fix is merged for the planned better-auth 1.7.7 release. That package is not available yet.

Upgrade all nodes handling the same cookie-backed OAuth or SAML state flow and all OAuth Proxy participants together, including the production coordinator and preview or development deployments. Keep installed Better Auth packages released alongside better-auth on the same release version. Restart pending sign-in and account-linking flows; pre-upgrade state cookies and proxy payloads are rejected. Public options and API signatures are unchanged.

Workarounds

Until you upgrade to the fixed release, apply one of these:

• Set one strong OAuth Proxy secret across every environment that takes part in the proxy flow, and keep it different from each environment's global Better Auth secret.
• Set account.storeStateStrategy: "database". This is already the default when a database or secondary storage is configured. If Magic Link is also enabled, switching can expose a separate cross-purpose verification-record path in affected releases. Ensure the two flows resolve to distinct stored identifiers; with built-in options, use Magic Link storeToken: "hashed" with global verification.storeIdentifier unset or "plain", or disable Magic Link or both built-in social and Generic OAuth sign-in.
• Remove the OAuth Proxy plugin if you do not need it.

Setting account.accountLinking.disableImplicitLinking: true stops this path from taking over an existing account. It does not fix the underlying flaw: the callback can still accept attacker-made data as a provider identity. Apply one of the steps above as well.

Affected packages

• better-auth >= 1.5.0-beta.12, < 1.7.7

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• better-auth 1.7.7