CVE-2023-26481 — authentik is an open-source Identity Provider

authentik is an open-source Identity Provider. Due to an insufficient access check, a recovery flow link that is created by an admin (or sent via email by an admin) can be used to set the password for any arbitrary user. This attack is only possible if a recovery flow exists, whi

01What is this vulnerability?

authentik is an open-source Identity Provider. Due to an insufficient access check, a recovery flow link that is created by an admin (or sent via email by an admin) can be used to set the password for any arbitrary user. This attack is only possible if a recovery flow exists, which has both an Identification and an Email stage bound to it. If the flow has policies on the identification stage to…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
goauthentik	authentik	< 2023.2.3, < 2023.1.3, < 2022.12.2

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-03-04T00:30:16.509Z
• Last modified: 2025-02-25T15:01:34.943Z

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/goauthentik/authentik/security/advisories/GHSA-3xf5-pqvf-rqq3
• goauthentik.io — https://goauthentik.io/docs/releases/2023.2#fixed-in-202323