Lord of Large Language Models vulnerable to Observable Discrepancy attack via authenticate_user function

Description

The parisneo/lollms repository is affected by a timing attack vulnerability in the authenticate_user function within the lollms_authentication.py file. This vulnerability allows attackers to enumerate valid usernames and guess passwords incrementally by analyzing response time differences. The affected version is the latest, and the issue is resolved in commit f78437f. The vulnerability arises from the use of Python's default string equality operator for password comparison, which compares characters sequentially and exits on the first mismatch, leading to variable response times based on the number of matching initial characters.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
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Repository advisory
Source code
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Published (advisory)
2025-07-07 12:30:23 UTC
Updated
2025-07-08 18:44:10 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2025-07-08 18:44:08 UTC
NVD published
2025-07-07

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.08% 23.54%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.5 3.0
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-203 Observable Discrepancy

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
pip lollms <= 11.0.0

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence