CVE-2018-16988
Description
Open XDMoD through 7.5.0 allows authentication bypass via brute-force of weak MD5-based password reset tokens.
AI Insight
LLM-synthesized narrative grounded in this CVE's description and references.
Open XDMoD through 7.5.0 allows authentication bypass via brute-force of weak MD5-based password reset tokens.
Vulnerability
Open XDMoD versions before 8.0 use a weak password reset mechanism. The reset token is computed as MD5(CONCAT(username, password_last_updated)), where password_last_updated is stored as a MySQL timestamp truncated to seconds. The application does not verify that a token was actually issued, allowing any valid token to be used for authentication [1].
Exploitation
An attacker who knows that a victim has initiated a password reset can brute-force the token. Since password_last_updated is accurate only to the second and the time window is known (e.g., within 10 minutes), only about 600 possible tokens exist. The attacker can submit these tokens via the password reset endpoint without any prior authentication [1].
Impact
Successful exploitation results in authentication bypass, allowing the attacker to take over any user account, including administrators, by forging a valid password reset token [1].
Mitigation
The vendor has patched the vulnerability in Open XDMoD version 8.0. Users should upgrade to version 8.0 or later. For versions prior to 8.0, no workaround is available beyond upgrading [1].
AI Insight generated on May 26, 2026. Synthesized from this CVE's description and the cited reference URLs; citations are validated against the source bundle.
Affected products
2- Open XDMoD/Open XDMoDdescription
- Range: <=7.5.0
Patches
0No patches discovered yet.
Vulnerability mechanics
No source-code context for this CVE — mechanics is only generated when we can read the actual fix diff. Without that, the four sections (root cause, attack vector, affected code, fix) would be speculation rather than analysis.
References
1- github.com/grymer/CVE/blob/master/CVE-2018-16988.mdnvdThird Party Advisory
News mentions
0No linked articles in our index yet.