CVE-2021-21424: Prevent user enumeration in authentication mechanisms

Affected versions

Symfony >=2.8.0, <3.4.49 | >= 5.0.0, <5.2.9 versions of the Symfony Security, Security Guard, Security Core, and Security HTTP components are affected by this security issue.

The issue has been fixed in Symfony 3.4.49, 4.4.24, 5.2.9, and 5.3.0 RC1. All other affected minor versions of Symfony won’t be patched as they are not maintained anymore.

Description

The ability to enumerate users was possible without relevant permissions due to different exception messages depending on whether the user existed or not. It was also possible to enumerate users by using a timing attack, by comparing time elapsed when authenticating an existing user and authenticating a non-existing user.

We now ensure that 403s are returned whether the user exists or not if the password is invalid or if the user does not exist.

The patch for this issue is available here and here also for branch 3.4.

Credits

I would like to thank James Isaac, Mathias Brodala and Laurent Minguet for reporting the issue and Robin Chalas for fixing the issue.

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Published in #Security Advisories