Vulnerabilities > CVE-2022-29174 - Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten Password vulnerability in Count Countly Server

047910
CVSS 6.8 - MEDIUM
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
MEDIUM
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
PARTIAL
Integrity impact
PARTIAL
Availability impact
PARTIAL

Summary

countly-server is the server-side part of Countly, a product analytics solution. Prior to versions 22.03.7 and 21.11.4, a malicious actor who knows an account email address/username and full name specified in the database is capable of guessing the password reset token. The actor may use this information to reset the password and take over the account. The problem has been patched in Countly Server version 22.03.7 for servers using the new user interface and in 21.11.4 for servers using the old user interface.

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.