Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Primary rating from Vendor (redhat).
CVSS VectorVendor: redhat
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
A flaw was found in 389 Directory Server. The PBKDF2-SHA256 password storage plugin does not enforce an upper bound on the iteration count extracted from stored password hashes. A privileged attacker who can modify a user's password hash can cause excessive CPU consumption during authentication, resulting in denial of service.
AnalysisAI
Uncontrolled CPU consumption in Red Hat 389 Directory Server's PBKDF2-SHA256 password storage plugin allows a highly privileged attacker who has write access to stored password hashes to craft a hash embedding an arbitrarily large iteration count, causing the LDAP server to exhaust CPU resources during any subsequent authentication attempt by the targeted user. Affected products span Red Hat Directory Server 11 through 13 and the 389-ds package as shipped across Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 through 10. No public exploit has been identified at time of analysis, and active exploitation has not been confirmed by CISA KEV.
Technical ContextAI
389 Directory Server is the upstream LDAP directory service underpinning Red Hat Directory Server and the ds-base package in RHEL. Its PBKDF2-SHA256 plugin stores password hashes in a format that encodes the key derivation iteration count inline with the hash value. PBKDF2 (RFC 8018) is deliberately compute-intensive - iteration count is the primary tuning parameter for work factor. The root cause (CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption) is the plugin's failure to validate the iteration count extracted from a stored hash against any upper bound before executing the derivation. Because the count is read from attacker-controllable data (the stored hash entry), a forged hash with an extreme count causes the server to perform unbounded CPU work on every authentication attempt against that account. The CVSS vector AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H confirms the impact is limited to availability with no confidentiality or integrity compromise.
RemediationAI
No vendor-released patch version has been confirmed from the available reference data at time of analysis - the Red Hat security advisory at https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-11790 and the associated Bugzilla entry at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2485421 should be monitored for patch releases targeting Red Hat Directory Server 11, 12, 13 and the RHEL ds-base package. As an interim compensating control, audit and restrict directory ACLs so that write access to the userPassword attribute is limited strictly to the Directory Manager account and explicitly designated administrative service accounts - removing any delegated or non-essential write grants reduces the attacker surface for hash manipulation. Additionally, implementing authentication rate-limiting or connection throttling at the LDAP listener level can reduce the blast radius of a CPU exhaustion attempt, though this does not prevent exploitation. Note that ACL tightening and rate-limiting do not remediate the underlying unbounded iteration count flaw; apply the vendor patch upon release.
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View allSame technique Denial Of Service
View allVendor StatusVendor
SUSE
Severity: Moderate| Product | Status |
|---|---|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP7 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Server Applications 15 SP7 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.0 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP7 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 16.0 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 16.1 | Affected |
| openSUSE Leap 16.0 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP4 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP5 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Server Applications 15 SP4 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Server Applications 15 SP5 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Server Applications 15 SP6 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP6 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP6-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Proxy 4.3 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Proxy LTS 4.3 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Retail Branch Server 4.3 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Retail Branch Server LTS 4.3 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Server 4.3 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Server LTS 4.3 | Affected |
| SUSE CaaS Platform 4.0 | Affected |
| SUSE Enterprise Storage 6 | Affected |
| SUSE Enterprise Storage 7 | Affected |
| SUSE Enterprise Storage 7.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP1-ESPOS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP1-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP2 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP2-ESPOS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP2-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP3 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP3-ESPOS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP6 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Server Applications 15 SP1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Server Applications 15 SP2 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Server Applications 15 SP3 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 15 SP2 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 15 SP3 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 15 SP4 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1-BCL | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2-BCL | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3-BCL | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3-LTSS | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP2 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP3 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP4 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP5 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Proxy 4.0 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Proxy 4.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Proxy 4.2 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Retail Branch Server 4.0 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Retail Branch Server 4.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Retail Branch Server 4.2 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Server 4.0 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Server 4.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Manager Server 4.2 | Affected |
| openSUSE Leap 15.3 | Affected |
| openSUSE Leap 15.4 | Affected |
| openSUSE Leap 15.5 | Affected |
| openSUSE Leap 15.6 | Affected |
| suse/389-ds | Affected |
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
EUVD-2026-35422
GHSA-5cpf-527w-96rp