Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) <= 9.1.4 - Unauthenticated Denial of Service via 'asenha_password_protection' Cookie
- ID
- WPSEC-2026-0450
- Plugin
- Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) (admin-site-enhancements)
- Affected
- from 5.8.0 before 9.2.0
- Remediation
- Update to 9.2.0 or later.
- CVSS 3.1
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weakness
- CWE-405
- Usage
- Plugin Medium · Affected versions Low among sites WPSec scans, 2026-10-06
- Attack surface
- Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) on WPSec AttackSurface
- Fix released
- Published
Description
The Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Denial of Service via the 'asenha_password_protection' cookie in versions 5.8.0 up to, and including, 9.1.4. This is due to the Password Protection module passing the raw, visitor-supplied cookie value to wp_check_password() as the stored hash, which lets the visitor choose the hashing algorithm and its cost factor. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to send a bcrypt string with a very high cost factor in the cookie, so that each request keeps a PHP worker busy until the PHP execution time limit ends it, and a small number of requests can make the site unavailable. Exploitation requires the Password Protection module, which is off by default, to be enabled.
References
- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0450/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/admin-site-enhancements/tags/9.2.0/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-site-enhancements/
Published by WPSec. Provided as is, without warranty. Corrections: contact us.
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