CVE-2020-35590

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 4.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-12-21 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-307

Description

LimitLoginAttempts.php in the limit-login-attempts-reloaded plugin before 2.17.4 for WordPress allows a bypass of (per IP address) rate limits because the X-Forwarded-For header can be forged. When the plugin is configured to accept an arbitrary header for the client source IP address, a malicious user is not limited to perform a brute force attack, because the client IP header accepts any arbitrary string. When randomizing the header input, the login count does not ever reach the maximum allowed retries.

Affected products

wpchefgadget Limit Login Attempts Reloaded – Login Security, 2FA, Brute Force Protection & Firewall: before 2.17.4 — fixed in 2.17.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: wpchefgadget Limit Login Attempts Reloaded – Login Security, 2FA, Brute Force Protection & Firewall 2.17.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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