CVE-2023-51316
Published: 20 February 2025
Summary
CVE-2023-51316 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Phpjabbers Bus Reservation System. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, ranked at the 46.0th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) and SI-9 (Information Input Restrictions).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly requires denial-of-service protections such as rate limiting to prevent resource exhaustion from excessive forgot password requests generating email floods.
Enforces restrictions on the amount and frequency of inputs to block repeated unauthenticated forgot password submissions that overwhelm the email system.
Limits consecutive unsuccessful attempts on authentication-related functions, applicable to rate limiting forgot password requests to mitigate DoS.
NVD Description
A lack of rate limiting in the 'Forgot Password' feature of PHPJabbers Bus Reservation System v1.1 allows attackers to send an excessive amount of email for a legitimate user, leading to a possible Denial of Service (DoS) via a large…
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amount of generated e-mail messages.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2023-51316 is a vulnerability stemming from a lack of rate limiting in the 'Forgot Password' feature of PHPJabbers Bus Reservation System version 1.1. This flaw enables attackers to trigger an excessive volume of email generation targeted at a legitimate user account, resulting in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. The issue is classified under CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption) and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), indicating high severity primarily due to its impact on availability.
Unauthenticated attackers (PR:N) can exploit this vulnerability remotely over the network (AV:N) with low complexity and no user interaction required. By repeatedly submitting forgot password requests for a valid user, an attacker can overwhelm the system's email generation process, flooding the mail server or service with a large number of messages and causing resource exhaustion that disrupts service availability for the targeted user or the application as a whole.
Advisories detailing the vulnerability are available from Packet Storm Security, including exploit details at http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/176497/PHPJabbers-Bus-Reservation-System-1.1-Missing-Rate-Limiting.html and https://packetstorm.news/files/id/176497. The official product page at https://www.phpjabbers.com/bus-reservation-system/#sectionDemo provides demo access but no specific patch or mitigation guidance is referenced in the available disclosures. Security practitioners should implement rate limiting on forgot password endpoints and monitor email generation logs in affected deployments.
Details
- CWE(s)