Bug 2485421 (CVE-2026-11790)

Summary: CVE-2026-11790 389-ds-base: 389-ds-base: PBKDF2 password storage plugin unbounded iteration count denial of service
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: aadhikar, bsmejkal, jachapma, mreynolds, progier, rhel-process-autobot, snegrini, spichugi, tbordaz, vashirov, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in 389 Directory Server. The PBKDF2-SHA256 password storage plugin does not enforce an upper bound on the iteration count extracted from stored password hashes. A privileged attacker who can modify a user's password hash can cause excessive CPU consumption during authentication, resulting in denial of service.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-06-05 12:24:58 UTC
The PBKDF2-SHA256 password storage plugin in 389 Directory Server extracts the iteration count from stored password hashes without an upper bound check. An attacker with Directory Manager privileges can plant a crafted {PBKDF2_SHA256} hash with extreme iteration counts (e.g. 0x7FFFFFFF). Any subsequent LDAP BIND as the poisoned account triggers unbounded CPU consumption, hanging a worker thread for hours and enabling persistent denial of service.

Both the C plugin (pbkdf2_pwd.c) and Rust plugin (pwdchan/lib.rs) are affected. Distinct from CVE-2024-5953 which added hash length check but not iteration cap.

Introduced in 389-ds-base 1.3.6 (commit 542287ce7, Ticket 397). PoC confirmed on Fedora 42 production binary.