CVE-2023-25171 Kiwi TCMS has denial of service vulnerability on Password reset page

High 7.5 Published 15 Feb 2023 Updated 10 Mar 2025

Attackers can cause denial of service by flooding the password reset page with requests, straining SMTP resources.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2023-25171?

CVE-2023-25171 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in kiwitcms kiwi, published on 15 Feb 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Kiwi TCMS, an open source test management system, does not impose rate limits in versions prior to 12.0. This makes it easier to attempt denial-of-service attacks against the Password reset page. An attacker could potentially send a large number of emails if they know the email addresses of users in Kiwi TCMS. Additionally that may strain SMTP resources. Users should upgrade to v12.0 or later to receive a patch. As potential workarounds, users may install and configure a rate-limiting proxy in front of Kiwi TCMS and/or configure rate limits on their email server when possible.

Weakness: CWE-770

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-25171?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including kiwitcms. It affects 1 product.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`kiwitcms` PyPI	All versions	`12.0`
`kiwitcms` PyPI	All versions	`12.0`
`kiwitcms` PyPI	All versions	`12.0`

Products include Kiwitcms Kiwi Tcms.

How do I fix CVE-2023-25171?

Upgrade kiwitcms to 12.0 or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2023-25171 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-25171 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-7j9h-3jxf-3vrf, PYSEC-2026-836.