# 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`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-site-enhancements/
- **Affected versions:** from 5.8.0 before 9.2.0
- **Fixed in:** 9.2.0 (Update to 9.2.0 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 5.9 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)
- **Weakness:** CWE-405
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Medium, affected versions Low (as of 2026-10-06)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/admin-site-enhancements
- **Fix released:** 2026-10-04
- **Published:** 2026-10-06
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0450/

## 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/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0450/

License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Free to use, share and adapt, also commercially, if you credit WPSec and link to this advisory.