Cotonti through 1.0.0 Predictable Password Recovery Token via Weak PRNG

Advisories

Cotonti through 1.0.0 Predictable Password Recovery Token via Weak PRNG

severity: critical
date: 9/18/2026
Affecting: Cotonti <= 1.0.0
CVE: CVE-2026-93868
CWE: CWE-338 Use of Cryptographically Weak Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG)
CVSS: 9.2
CVSS V4 Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
References: https://github.com/Cotonti/Cotonti/issues/1890
https://github.com/Cotonti/Cotonti/pull/1898
https://github.com/Cotonti/Cotonti/blob/1.0.0/modules/users/inc/users.passrecover.php
https://github.com/Cotonti/Cotonti
Credit: Harsh Raj Singhania
Description: Cotonti through 1.0.0 derives password recovery validation tokens from md5(microtime()) in users.passrecover.php, creating a predictable token space of approximately one million values per second. Unauthenticated attackers can read the server Date header, precompute candidate tokens within a narrow time window, and probe them against the passrecover authentication endpoint to reset any account password including administrators.

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