Limit Login Attempts Reloaded: A security weakness
Limit Login Attempts Reloaded is affected by a security weakness. Exposure depends on how the affected operation is made reachable by the site. The resulting impact depends on how the affected component exposes the vulnerable operation.
- Component
- Limit Login Attempts Reloaded
- Plugin slug
limit-login-attempts-reloaded- Affected
- See vendor advisory
- Safe version
- See mitigation notes
- Published
- Dec 21, 2020
This CVE was published Dec 21, 2020 and is one of 4 known issues for this plugin.
Update, patch or deactivate.
Update Limit Login Attempts Reloaded to a release outside the affected range, or disable and remove it until a fixed version is available.
No confirmed safe version is listed. Consider a vendor-supported patch or temporarily restricting the affected functionality while you assess the risk.
Deactivate only when warranted by your risk profile, or when advised by your hosting provider in the limited circumstances where the vulnerability cannot otherwise be mitigated. If you’re unsure which action is appropriate, contact Fused or your hosting provider for guidance.
Technical description
LimitLoginAttempts.php in the limit-login-attempts-reloaded plugin before 2.17.4 for WordPress allows a bypass of (per IP address) rate limits because the X-Forwarded-For header can be forged. When the plugin is configured to accept an arbitrary header for the client source IP address, a malicious user is not limited to perform a brute force attack, because the client IP header accepts any arbitrary string. When randomizing the header input, the login count does not ever reach the maximum allowed retries.
NVD vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H