Supply Chain Security

Critical Vulnerabilities Found in Passwordstate Enterprise Password Manager

Researchers discovered that the Passwordstate enterprise password manager made by Australian company Click Studios is affected by serious vulnerabilities that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to obtain a user’s passwords.

Eduard Kovacs

December 21, 2022

The security holes, patched in early November with the release of version 9.6 build 9653, were reported to the developer in August by Swiss cybersecurity firm Modzero.

Modzero researchers discovered a total of seven types of vulnerabilities in Passwordstate, including issues related to authentication and authorization bypass, improper password protection, hardcoded credentials, and a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw.

An API authentication bypass tracked as CVE-2022-3875 has been assigned a ‘critical’ severity rating. It can allow an unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication for the Passwordstate API, enabling them to gain access to a user’s website passwords, one-time passwords (OTPs), password lists, and other secrets by knowing only their username.

The remaining security holes have been rated ‘medium’ or ‘low’, but they can still pose a significant risk when chained with other vulnerabilities.

Modzero researchers demonstrated how an attacker who knows the targeted individual’s username could forge an API token for that username, go through all password lists, add an XSS payload to the victim’s account via a new password entry (the payload is executed when the user views the entry), obtain a reverse shell on the system, and decrypt and dump all stored passwords within the compromised Passwordstate instance.

Additional technical details are available in a blog post and a report published this week by Modzero.

Threat actors have been known to target Passwordstate. In April 2021, the company urged users to reset all their passwords after a poisoned update was served through a supply chain attack.

It’s not surprising that Passwordstate is a tempting target for threat actors. Click Studios says its product is used by more than 29,000 customers, including many Fortune 500 companies.

Written By Eduard Kovacs

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Latest News

Click to comment

Mapping Threat Intelligence to the NIST Compliance Framework Part 2

How threat intelligence is critical when justifying budget for GRC personnel, and for threat intelligence, incident response, security operations and CISO buyers.

Landon Winkelvoss

Password Dependency: How to Break the Cycle

Hackers rarely hack in anymore. They log in using stolen, weak, default, or otherwise compromised credentials. That’s why it’s so critical to break the password dependency cycle. But how can this be done?

Torsten George

Why CISOs Make Great Board Members

Cybersecurity-related risk is a top concern, so boards need to know they have the proper oversight in place. Even as first-timers, successful CISOs make for successful board members.

Galina Antova

A Change in Mindset: From a Threat-based to Risk-based Approach to Security

A threat-based approach to security often focuses on a checklist to meet industry requirements but overlooked the key component of security: reducing risk.

Marie Hattar