RansomLook Login Endpoint Allows Timing-Based Username Enumeration and Unthrottled Authentication Attempts

MITRE NVD CVE.ORG JSON API

Summary

CVECVE-2026-78551
StatePUBLISHED
AssignerCIRCL
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-08-24 20:17:23 UTC
Updated2026-08-24 20:17:23 UTC
DescriptionRansomLook contains multiple weaknesses in its authentication endpoint that allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to enumerate valid usernames, perform unrestricted password-guessing attacks, and potentially exhaust application worker resources. For local authentication, the login implementation previously checked whether a submitted username existed before invoking the password hash verification function. Requests containing a nonexistent username therefore returned significantly faster than requests for valid accounts, for which the computationally expensive password verification routine was executed. A remote attacker could measure these response-time differences to determine which usernames correspond to valid RansomLook accounts. In addition, the /login endpoint did not restrict the number or frequency of failed authentication attempts. An attacker could consequently perform password brute-force, dictionary, password-spraying, or credential-stuffing attacks against known accounts without server-side throttling. For valid usernames, each authentication attempt also invokes the password key-derivation function, which consumes a significant amount of CPU time. A sufficiently high rate of login attempts could therefore occupy the application's synchronous Gunicorn workers and cause a denial of service affecting the entire application. The issue has been addressed by always performing password verification using a randomly generated dummy password hash when the supplied username does not exist, eliminating the username-dependent timing discrepancy. Failed authentication attempts are additionally rate-limited per client IP address using Valkey/Redis, with five failed attempts within five minutes resulting in a one-hour block. The reverse-proxy configuration was also updated so that the application derives the client address from a trusted X-Forwarded-For value that cannot be overridden by a client-supplied header.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v4.0 8.8 HIGH from 5a6e4751-2f3f-4070-9419-94fb35b644e8

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Problem Types: CWE-307 | CWE-400 | CWE-307 CWE-307 Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts | CWE-400 CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
4.05a6e4751-2f3f-4070-9419-94fb35b644e8Secondary8.8HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C...
4.0CNACVSS8.8HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

CVSS v4.0 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
None
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Sub Conf.
None
Sub Integrity
None
Sub Availability
None

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Ransomlook Ransomlook affected 2.0.0 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/RansomLook/RansomLook/commit/8602740347b0e928ad9fbaf5bc6ff242... 5a6e4751-2f3f-4070-9419-94fb35b644e8 github.com
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: Jeroen Pinoy (en)

CNA: Fafner [_KeyZee_] (en)

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