CVE-2026-78551
Published:August 24, 2026
Updated:September 24, 2026
RansomLook 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.
Related Resources (3)
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Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
8.8
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
LOW
Vulnerable System Integrity
NONE
Vulnerable System Availability
HIGH
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
8.2
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
LOW
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Weakness Type (CWE)
EPSS
Base Score:
0.40