The vulnerability exists because the application uses a hard-coded secret key, 'frangoteam751', for signing and verifying JWTs. This is explicitly defined in the server/api/jwt-helper.js file. An attacker who knows this secret can forge JWTs with arbitrary claims, such as administrative privileges. The functions verify, verifyToken, and requireAuth are directly responsible for verifying incoming tokens. During an exploit, one of these functions would be called to process the forged token. The function would incorrectly validate the token because it was signed with the correct, albeit hard-coded, secret. This allows the attacker to bypass authentication and gain unauthorized access to the application, including administrative functions. The functions getNewTokenFromRequest and getGuestToken are also included as they are part of the insecure token management system that relies on this static, publicly known secret.