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Vulnerability Intelligence

CVE-2020-26214

Critical

LDAP authentication bypass with empty password

Published Nov 6, 2020 · Updated Jul 9, 2026 · Also known as GHSA-5hmm-x8q8-w5jh, PYSEC-2020-159

Key Facts

Patch immediately
  • CVE-2020-26214 is a critical-severity vulnerability (CVSS 9.3 v4) affecting Alerta (Alerta Project), alerta-server (pypi).
  • It is not listed in any known-exploited vulnerabilities catalog. No public exploit code is known.
  • EPSS estimates a 66% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
  • Fixed versions are available, including Alerta 7.5.7, alerta-server 2bfa31779a4c9df2fa68fa4d0c5c909698c5ef65, alerta-server 7.5.7.
  • Brandefense priority: patch immediately, because it is very likely to be exploited soon.

CVSS v4

9.3

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

EPSS (30-day exploit likelihood)

66%

Higher than 99.2% of all scored CVEs

Exploited in the wild

No known

Not in a known-exploited catalog

Public exploit code

None known

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Description

In Alerta before version 8.1.0, users may be able to bypass LDAP authentication if they provide an empty password when Alerta server is configure to use LDAP as the authorization provider. Only deployments where LDAP servers are configured to allow unauthenticated authentication mechanism for anonymous authorization are affected. A fix has been implemented in version 8.1.0 that returns HTTP 401 Unauthorized response for any authentication attempts where the password field is empty. As a workaround LDAP administrators can disallow unauthenticated bind requests by clients.

Affected Products

3 affected entries in total
ProductAffected versionsFixed in
AlertaAlerta Project>= < 8.1.07.5.7
alerta-serverpypi>= 8.0.08.1.0

Patched Releases

Alerta

7.5.7

alerta-server

2bfa31779a4c9df2fa68fa4d0c5c909698c5ef65, 7.5.7, 8.1.0

Timeline

  1. Publicly disclosed

    Nov 6, 2020

  2. Last updated

    Jul 9, 2026

Weakness Type

  • CWE-287 Improper Authentication

References

6 more references in the full CVE brief

FAQ

Common Questions.

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