CVE-2023-51332 in Meeting Room Booking System
Summary
by MITRE • 02/20/2025
A lack of rate limiting in the 'Forgot Password' feature of PHPJabbers Meeting Room Booking System v1.0 allows attackers to send an excessive amount of email for a legitimate user, leading to a possible Denial of Service (DoS) via a large amount of generated e-mail messages.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/08/2026
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2023-51332 resides within the PHPJabbers Meeting Room Booking System version 1.0, specifically targeting the 'Forgot Password' functionality. This flaw represents a critical security oversight that enables malicious actors to exploit the system's lack of rate limiting mechanisms. The vulnerability falls under the category of insufficient rate limiting as classified by CWE-305, which directly impacts the system's ability to manage and control the frequency of authentication-related requests. Attackers can leverage this weakness to inundate the system with excessive password reset requests for legitimate user accounts, effectively creating a scenario where the legitimate user receives a flood of email notifications while the system becomes overwhelmed by the volume of requests.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from the absence of proper request throttling or rate limiting controls within the password recovery mechanism. When a user initiates a password reset request, the system typically sends an email containing a reset token to the registered address. However, without rate limiting, an attacker can repeatedly trigger this process for the same user account or multiple accounts, causing the system to generate and dispatch numerous email messages within a short timeframe. This behavior constitutes a classic denial of service attack vector that specifically targets the email delivery infrastructure and the application's processing capabilities. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it does not require authentication or advanced privileges to exploit, making it accessible to any attacker with knowledge of the target system.
The operational impact of CVE-2023-51332 extends beyond simple service disruption to encompass broader security and operational concerns. Legitimate users may experience email flooding that could overwhelm their inbox capacity, potentially leading to important messages being filtered or lost. The system's resources become consumed by processing excessive requests, which can lead to performance degradation or complete service unavailability for legitimate users attempting to access the booking system. From a security perspective, this vulnerability can be used as a reconnaissance tool to identify valid user accounts within the system, as successful password reset requests confirm account existence. The attack can also be combined with other techniques to amplify the impact, such as using the system to send spam emails or to overwhelm email servers, potentially leading to blacklisting of the system's sending infrastructure.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability should focus on implementing robust rate limiting controls within the password recovery functionality. The system should enforce limits on the number of password reset requests allowed per user account within a specific time window, typically measured in minutes or hours. This approach aligns with the ATT&CK technique T1110.003 for Credential Access - Password Policy Violation, which emphasizes the importance of controlling access attempts to prevent abuse. Organizations should implement exponential backoff mechanisms that increase delays between requests as the number of attempts increases, making automated attacks less effective. Additionally, the system should log and monitor all password reset activities to detect anomalous patterns that might indicate abuse attempts. The implementation should also consider implementing CAPTCHA mechanisms or other user verification methods to distinguish between legitimate users and automated attackers. From a monitoring perspective, security operations centers should establish alerts for unusual spikes in password reset requests, which can serve as early indicators of potential attacks. These controls should be designed in accordance with industry best practices for web application security and should be tested thoroughly to ensure they do not inadvertently impact legitimate user workflows while effectively mitigating the denial of service threat.