Open WebUI: Account enumeration via observable login timing discrepancy
### Summary The `/api/v1/auths/signin` endpoint leaked whether an email address belonged to a registered account through a response-time side channel. Password verification ran bcrypt only when the email was found in the database; for a non-existent email the request returned early without hashing. The expensive bcrypt comparison therefore made valid-account attempts respond significantly slower (~180 ms) than non-existent ones (~5 ms), so an unauthenticated attacker could enumerate valid accounts by measuring response time. ### Details On signin the backend looked the user up by email and only performed the bcrypt password comparison if a record existed. A missing email short-circuited before any hashing, producing the timing gap. The built-in brute-force throttling did not prevent it: sending one request at a time with a small delay between requests stays under the rate limit while still exposing the difference. Observed in the reporter's run (HTTP 400 for every attempt, the response time is the signal): ``` Email Status Response time joe@example.com 400 186 ms <- valid account larry@example.com 400 9 ms jose@example.com 400 6 ms james@example.com 400 5 ms ``` ### Impact An unauthenticated attacker can enumerate which email addresses are registered accounts, which enables targeted password-spraying against confirmed accounts. The impact is amplified by MFA not being enabled by default. No data is read or modified; the disclosure is limited to account existence. ### Patched The authentication path now runs a bcrypt verification against a constant placeholder hash whenever the email does not resolve to an active credential, so a real hash comparison executes on every attempt and the response time is the same whether or not the account exists. Fixed in 0.10.0. ### Credits @dievus
describes (1)
Related CVEs.
| ID | severity | exploitable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-59218US | — | — | ||
Open WebUI is an extensible, feature-rich, and user-friendly self-hosted AI platform. Prior to 0.10.0, the /api/v1/auths/signin endpoint looked users up by email and only ran bcryp… | ||||
references
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
- https://github.com/open-webui/open-webuiPACKAGE
- https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui/commit/993e74912199c66c522f08ec81abe31d76985e39WEB
- https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui/pull/26385WEB
- https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui/releases/tag/v0.10.0WEB
- https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui/security/advisories/GHSA-7rw5-9f7q-xj36WEB
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-59218ADVISORY
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