Limit Login Attempts Reloaded <= 2.17.3 - Login Rate Limiting Bypass

Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts
CVE CVE-2020-35590
CVSS High (7.3)
Publicly Published December 14, 2020
Last Updated January 22, 2024
Researcher n4nj0
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.

References

1 affected software package

Software Type Plugin
Software Slug limit-login-attempts-reloaded (view on wordpress.org)
Patched? Yes
Affected Version
  • <= 2.17.3
Patched Version
  • 2.17.4
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