Vulnerabilities > CVE-2023-31287 - Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten Password vulnerability in Serenity Serene and Startsharp
Attack vector
LOCAL Attack complexity
LOW Privileges required
LOW Confidentiality impact
HIGH Integrity impact
HIGH Availability impact
HIGH Summary
An issue was discovered in Serenity Serene (and StartSharp) before 6.7.0. Password reset links are sent by email. A link contains a token that is used to reset the password. This token remains valid even after the password reset and can be used a second time to change the password of the corresponding user. The token expires only 3 hours after issuance and is sent as a query parameter when resetting. An attacker with access to the browser history can thus use the token again to change the password in order to take over the account.
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Application | 2 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
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.