CVE-2026-44596: Yamcs: No Rate Limiting on Authentication Endpoint

Summary

The authentication endpoint POST /auth/token in yamcs-core lacks any form of rate limiting, account lockout, or failed attempt throttling. As a result, an unauthenticated remote attacker can perform unlimited password guessing attempts against any user account.

This missing rate limiting vulnerability (CWE-307) significantly increases the risk of successful brute-force attacks.

Root Cause

File: yamcs-core/src/main/java/org/yamcs/http/auth/AuthHandler.java

POST /auth/token has no rate limiting, no lockout after failed attempts, and no CAPTCHA. The handler processes unlimited authentication requests without any throttling mechanism:

java // AuthHandler.java — handleToken() // No throttle, no failed attempt counter, no lockout private void handleToken(HandlerContext ctx) { ... getSecurityStore().login(token).whenComplete((info, err) -> { // Directly attempts authentication with no rate check }); }

This is absent by default — the official quickstart and documentation contain no guidance on configuring rate limiting.

Impact

An attacker can make unlimited authentication attempts against any account. This enables efficient brute-force attacks against any account.

Proof of Concept

bash 20 attempts — zero rate limiting for i in $(seq 1 20); do curl -s -o /dev/null -w "Attempt $i: HTTP %{httpcode}\n" \ -X POST "http://TARGET:8090/auth/token" \ -d "granttype=password&username=operator&password=operator12$i" done All return HTTP 401 — no HTTP 429 ever

Confirmed: 20 attempts in 0.07 seconds, no rate limiting enforced.

Fix

Implement DRF-style throttling on /auth/token:

java // Track failed attempts per IP private static final Cache<String, Integer> FAILEDATTEMPTS = CacheBuilder.newBuilder().expireAfterWrite(15, TimeUnit.MINUTES).build();

private static final int MAXATTEMPTS = 10;

private void handleToken(HandlerContext ctx) { String ip = ctx.getRemoteAddress(); int attempts = Optional.ofNullable(FAILEDATTEMPTS.getIfPresent(ip)).orElse(0); if (attempts >= MAXATTEMPTS) { throw new TooManyRequestsException("Rate limit exceeded"); } // ... existing auth logic // On failure: FAILEDATTEMPTS.put(ip, attempts + 1) }