# CVE-2025-42615: Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts vulnerability in CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup

> Attackers can brute-force 2FA OTP codes without lockout, leading to account takeover in Vulnerability-Lookup.

- **Severity:** High 8.1 (`CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:A/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:N/SA:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** A user has to click or open something
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 8 Dec 2025
- **Updated:** 8 Dec 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-w22j-qgr5-cw5m

## What is CVE-2025-42615?

CVE-2025-42615 is a high-severity vulnerability in CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup, published on 8 Dec 2025. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

### Official description

In affected versions, vulnerability-lookup did not track or limit failed
 One-Time Password (OTP) attempts during Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
 verification. An attacker who already knew or guessed a valid username 
and password could submit an arbitrary number of OTP codes without 
causing the account to be locked or generating any specific alert for 
administrators.

This lack of rate-limiting and lockout on OTP failures significantly 
lowers the cost of online brute-force attacks against 2FA codes and 
increases the risk of successful account takeover, especially if OTP 
entropy is reduced (e.g. short numeric codes, user reuse, or predictable
 tokens). Additionally, administrators had no direct visibility into 
accounts experiencing repeated 2FA failures, making targeted attacks 
harder to detect and investigate.

The patch introduces a persistent failed_otp_attempts counter on user 
accounts, locks the user after 5 invalid OTP submissions, resets the 
counter on successful verification, and surfaces failed 2FA attempts in 
the admin user list. This enforces an account lockout policy for OTP 
brute-force attempts and improves monitoring capabilities for suspicious
 2FA activity.This issue affects Vulnerability-Lookup: before 2.18.0.

Weakness: CWE-307 (Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-42615?


## How do I fix CVE-2025-42615?

No fix has been published for CVE-2025-42615 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2025-42615 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-42615 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-42615 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-42615 is a high-severity vulnerability in CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup, published on 8 Dec 2025. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-42615 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-42615/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-42615/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-42615
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-42615
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-42615

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-42615/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.