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Access Tokens Stay Valid after User Password Change

Low
boojack published GHSA-mr34-8733-grr2 Nov 14, 2025

Package

memos (Memos)

Affected versions

<=v0.18.1

Patched versions

v0.18.2

Description

Summary

Access Tokens are used to authenticate application access. When a user changes their password, the existing list of Access Tokens stay valid instead of expiring. If a user finds that their account has been compromised, they can update their password.

The bad actor though will still have access to their account because the bad actor's Access Token stays on the list as a valid token. The user will have to manually delete the bad actor's Access Token to secure their account. The list of Access Tokens has a generic Description which makes it hard to pinpoint a bad actor in a list of Access Tokens.

Details

To improve Memos security, all Access Tokens will need to be revoked when a user changes their password. This removes the session for all the user's devices and prompts the user to log in again. You can treat the old Access Tokens as "invalid" because those Access Tokens were created with the older password.

PoC

  1. Have 2 devices on hand
  2. Log onto your Memos account on both devices. Notice how Access Tokens are created for each.
  3. On one device, successfully change the password. Refresh the page on the 2nd device and notice how it doesn't log out the user.
  4. On the 2nd device, change the password again. Refresh the page on the 1st device and notice how it doesn't log out the user.

Impact

A bad actor will still have access to the user's account because the Access Token does not expire on a password update. Having multi-factor authentication will vastly improve account security in Account Takeover cases instead of just relying on a password.

Severity

Low

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2024-21635

Weaknesses

Improper Authentication

When an actor claims to have a given identity, the product does not prove or insufficiently proves that the claim is correct. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits