CVE-2026-111874: OpenCATS Career Portal CareersUI.php processLogin excessive authentication
A flaw has been found in OpenCATS 0.10.0. Affected is the function processLogin of the file modules/careers/CareersUI.php of the component Career Portal. This manipulation of the argument applyToJobSubAction causes improper restriction of excessive authentication attempts. Remote exploitation of the attack is possible. A high degree of complexity is needed for the attack. The exploitability is told to be difficult. The exploit has been published and may be used. Patch name: 1cf4fa3ee9054314b023be79d404078645c22ade. It is suggested to install a patch to address this issue. The project maintainer explains: "Candidates will now need to authenticate each time they access the Career Portal and successfully complete the CAPTCHA as part of that authentication flow. The authenticated candidate identity is now maintained server-side rather than relying on the previous persistent client-side cats…cw cookie mechanism. Application-level rate limiting is deliberately not in scope for this change. In my view, request throttling and brute-force protection of that kind are better applied at the network, reverse-proxy or web-server layer, where they can be configured appropriately for each deployment without OpenCATS having to implement and maintain its own rate-limiting framework. I'll update the online documentation to that effect."
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Upgrade
Upgrade
OpenCATS Career Portalto a version that resolves this vulnerability.Patch 1cf4fa3ee9054314b023be79d404078645c22ade - Compensating control
Apply request throttling and brute-force protection at the network, reverse-proxy, or web-server layer rather than through application-level rate limiting.
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can attempt to exploit this issue?
The issue can be exploited remotely and does not require prior authentication or user interaction. Exploitation is described as high complexity and difficult, but a public exploit has been published.
Which installations are identified as affected?
The affected version identified is OpenCATS 0.10.0, specifically the Career Portal component. The vulnerable code is in modules/careers/CareersUI.php.
What should be done if the patch cannot be installed immediately?
Apply brute-force protection or request throttling at the network, reverse-proxy, or web-server layer. The maintainer states that application-level rate limiting is not included in the patch.
What changes does the available patch make?
Patch 1cf4fa3ee9054314b023be79d404078645c22ade requires candidates to authenticate and complete CAPTCHA when accessing the Career Portal. It also keeps authenticated candidate identity server-side instead of using the prior persistent client-side cats…cw cookie mechanism.