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CVE-2026-93868 – Password Recovery Account Takeover – Cotonti Siena ≤ 1.0.0

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Summary

CVE-2026-93868 is a critical vulnerability in Cotonti Siena’s password recovery mechanism, caused by the use of a predictable token-generation function. Because the validation token is derived from md5(microtime()), an unauthenticated attacker can predict or brute-force valid recovery tokens and take over any account, including administrator accounts. The flaw affects Cotonti Siena versions up to and including 1.0.0 and carries a CVSS score of 9.2 (Critical).

Technical details

  • Root cause: the password recovery routine in modules/users/inc/users.passrecover.php generates the validation token with $validationKey = md5(microtime());. microtime() without the true parameter is a low-entropy, time-based value, so the resulting MD5 hash yields only on the order of one million possible values per second.
  • Trigger conditions: an attacker initiates or observes the password recovery flow for a target account and reads the server’s Date response header to narrow down the timestamp window used to seed the token.
  • Attack vector: network-based, unauthenticated. The attacker precomputes candidate tokens for the observed time window and submits them against the password recovery validation endpoint until a match resets the target account’s password.
  • Impact: full account takeover, including administrator accounts, since the predictable token allows resetting the password of any user without prior credentials.

Affected software

  • Cotonti Siena versions up to and including 1.0.0

Severity

  • CVSS v4.0 Base Score: 9.2 (Critical) — 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
  • CVSS v3.1 Base Score: 8.1 (High) — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Mitigation and recommended actions

  • Immediate: apply the fix tracked in the vendor’s pull request (#1898) that replaces the weak token generation with a cryptographically secure random value generator (e.g., PHP’s random_bytes()), and upgrade to a version of Cotonti Siena beyond 1.0.0 once released.
  • If no patch is available: disable or restrict access to the password recovery feature until a fix can be applied, monitor for repeated password-recovery validation attempts from the same source, and consider requiring additional out-of-band verification (e.g., manual admin approval) for account password resets.

References

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