High severity · published Sep 3, 2026
CVE-2026-85237
Missing Rate Limiting in Email OTP Verification Allows Brute-Force Authentication Bypass
8.1
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
A vulnerability in MISP's email-based one-time password (OTP) authentication flow allowed an attacker to perform an unrestricted number of OTP verification attempts.
The email_otp() endpoint did not apply brute-force protection when validating submitted OTP values. An attacker who had reached the OTP verification stage, for example after successfully providing a user's primary authentication credentials, could repeatedly submit candidate OTP values while the same OTP remained valid. This significantly increased the feasibility of guessing the OTP and bypassing the additional authentication factor, potentially resulting in unauthorized access to the affected user's account.
The issue was exacerbated by the fact that the OTP is associated with the user rather than with an individual pending login session, allowing multiple concurrent sessions to attempt guesses against the same valid OTP.
The patch integrates the existing MISP brute-force protection mechanism into the email OTP flow. Failed OTP attempts are now counted against the user, further attempts are rejected once the configured threshold is reached, and the active OTP is invalidated when the attempt budget is exhausted. Blocklisted users are also prevented from requesting the generation of a fresh OTP. In addition, OTP comparison now uses hash_equals() and validates that the submitted value is a string.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 39% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
MI
misp · misp
through 2.5.45 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-85237
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-85237
Patch
https://github.com/MISP/MISP/commit/8658062ea
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