Vulnerabilities > CVE-2017-7731 - Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten Password vulnerability in Fortinet Fortiportal

047910
CVSS 5.0 - MEDIUM
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
LOW
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
PARTIAL
Integrity impact
NONE
Availability impact
NONE
network
low complexity
fortinet
CWE-640

Summary

A weak password recovery vulnerability in Fortinet FortiPortal versions 4.0.0 and below allows attacker to carry out information disclosure via the Forgotten Password feature.

Vulnerable Configurations

Part Description Count
Application
Fortinet
1

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Password Recovery Exploitation
    An attacker may take advantage of the application feature to help users recover their forgotten passwords in order to gain access into the system with the same privileges as the original user. Generally password recovery schemes tend to be weak and insecure. Most of them use only one security question . For instance, mother's maiden name tends to be a fairly popular one. Unfortunately in many cases this information is not very hard to find, especially if the attacker knows the legitimate user. These generic security questions are also re-used across many applications, thus making them even more insecure. An attacker could for instance overhear a coworker talking to a bank representative at the work place and supplying their mother's maiden name for verification purposes. An attacker can then try to log in into one of the victim's accounts, click on "forgot password" and there is a good chance that the security question there will be to provide mother's maiden name. A weak password recovery scheme totally undermines the effectiveness of a strong password scheme.