What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-26288: Parse Server stores password in plain text

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-12-30 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-312

Description

Parse Server is an open source backend that can be deployed to any infrastructure that can run Node.js. It is an npm package "parse-server". In Parse Server before version 4.5.0, user passwords involved in LDAP authentication are stored in cleartext. This is fixed in version 4.5.0 by stripping password after authentication to prevent cleartext password storage.

Affected products

• parse-community parse-server: before 4.5.0 — fixed in 4.5.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: parse-community parse-server 4.5.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/commit/da905a357d062ab4fea727a21eac231acc2ed92a
• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/releases/tag/4.5.0
• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/security/advisories/GHSA-4w46-w44m-3jq3
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/parse-server
• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/commit/da905a357d062ab4fea727a21eac231acc2ed92a
• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/releases/tag/4.5.0
• https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server/security/advisories/GHSA-4w46-w44m-3jq3
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/parse-server

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