What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-4381

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 4.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-02-08 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-798

Description

MediaWiki before 1.18.5, and 1.19.x before 1.19.2 saves passwords in the local database, (1) which could make it easier for context-dependent attackers to obtain cleartext passwords via a brute-force attack or, (2) when an authentication plugin returns a false in the strict function, could allow remote attackers to use old passwords for non-existing accounts in an external authentication system via unspecified vectors.

Affected products

• Wikimedia Foundation MediaWiki: before 1.18.5; from 1.19.0 before 1.19.2 — fixed in 1.18.5, 1.19.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Wikimedia Foundation MediaWiki 1.18.5, 1.19.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://osvdb.org/show/osvdb/85106
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/08/31/10
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/08/31/6
• https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686330
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=853442
• https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-announce/2012-August/000119.html
• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T41184
• http://osvdb.org/show/osvdb/85106
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/08/31/10
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/08/31/6
• https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686330
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=853442

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