CVE-2023-25806: Time discrepancy in authentication responses in OpenSearch

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-03-02 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-208

Description

OpenSearch Security is a plugin for OpenSearch that offers encryption, authentication and authorization. There is an observable discrepancy in the authentication response time between calls where the user provided exists and calls where it does not. This issue only affects calls using the internal basic identity provider (IdP), and not other externally configured IdPs. Patches were released in versions 1.3.9 and 2.6.0, there are no workarounds.

Affected products

AWS Opensearch: before 1.3.9; from 2.0.0 before 2.6.0 — fixed in 1.3.9, 2.6.0
Amazon Opensearch Security: before 1.3.9; from 2.0.0 before 2.6.0 — fixed in 1.3.9, 2.6.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: AWS Opensearch 1.3.9, 2.6.0; Amazon Opensearch Security 1.3.9, 2.6.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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