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GHSA-jjjr-3jcw-f8v6

MediumCVSS 6.1 / 10
Published May 7, 2020·Last modified Mar 13, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Impact

A potential timing attack exists on pages or documents that have been protected with a shared password through Wagtail's "Privacy" controls. This password check is performed through a character-by-character string comparison, and so an attacker who is able to measure the time taken by this check to a high degree of accuracy could potentially use timing differences to gain knowledge of the password. (This is understood to be feasible on a local network, but not on the public internet.)

Privacy settings that restrict access to pages / documents on a per-user or per-group basis (as opposed to a shared password) are unaffected by this vulnerability.

Patches

Patched versions have been released as Wagtail 2.7.3 (for the LTS 2.7 branch), Wagtail 2.8.2 and Wagtail 2.9.

Workarounds

Site owners who are unable to upgrade to the new versions can use user- or group-based privacy restrictions to restrict access to sensitive information; these are unaffected by this vulnerability.

Risk Scores
Base Score
6.1

The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is difficult for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability and may require special conditions. An attacker needs high-level or administrative privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability can affect other systems as well, not just the initial system. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a low impact on the integrity of the data.

Threat Intelligence
5.6

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
0.25%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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