CVE-2025-48375 in Schule
Summary
by MITRE • 05/23/2025
Schule is open-source school management system software. Prior to version 1.0.1, the file forgot_password.php (or equivalent endpoint responsible for email-based OTP generation) lacks proper rate limiting controls, allowing attackers to abuse the OTP request functionality. This vulnerability can be exploited to send an excessive number of OTP emails, leading to potential denial-of-service (DoS) conditions or facilitating user harassment through email flooding. Version 1.0.1 fixes the issue.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/05/2025
The Schule open-source school management system presents a critical security vulnerability in its password recovery mechanism that has been addressed in version 1.0.1. This flaw resides in the forgot_password.php endpoint or equivalent functionality responsible for generating one-time passwords via email. The vulnerability stems from the complete absence of rate limiting controls within the OTP request functionality, creating a fundamental security gap that allows unauthorized users to exploit the system's email delivery mechanisms without restriction. The lack of proper rate limiting represents a classic security misconfiguration that directly violates established security principles for protecting against abuse and ensuring system integrity. This weakness enables malicious actors to repeatedly submit requests for OTP generation, overwhelming the system's email infrastructure and potentially causing cascading failures in the broader network services that depend on email delivery.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple email flooding to encompass serious denial-of-service conditions that can severely disrupt legitimate system operations. Attackers can leverage this flaw to exhaust the system's email capacity, preventing legitimate users from receiving their password recovery emails while simultaneously consuming network resources and potentially triggering spam detection mechanisms that could affect the entire organization's email infrastructure. The vulnerability creates an environment where automated abuse is trivial to implement, as the system provides no inherent protection against repeated requests from the same or different IP addresses. This type of vulnerability is particularly dangerous in educational environments where system availability is critical for administrative functions and student data management, as it can effectively disable core functionality through resource exhaustion attacks that are both simple to execute and difficult to detect in real-time.
The technical nature of this vulnerability aligns with CWE-307, which addresses improper restriction of excessive number of repeated attempts, and represents a clear violation of the principle of least privilege and resource management in web applications. From an attacker's perspective, this vulnerability maps directly to techniques described in the MITRE ATT&CK framework under the Initial Access and Resource Hijacking tactics, where adversaries establish persistent access through exploitation of weak authentication mechanisms and then leverage the compromised system for resource exhaustion attacks. The absence of rate limiting controls means that the system cannot differentiate between legitimate user requests and malicious abuse attempts, creating an open door for automated tools to generate massive volumes of OTP requests. The vulnerability affects the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system by enabling unauthorized users to disrupt service delivery, potentially causing cascading failures in related systems that depend on email communication for their operations.
Organizations utilizing Schule systems prior to version 1.0.1 should immediately implement mitigations including the deployment of rate limiting controls at both application and network levels to prevent abuse of the OTP functionality. The most effective approach involves implementing time-based rate limiting that restricts the number of OTP requests per user or IP address within a specific time window, combined with account lockout mechanisms after repeated failed attempts. Network-level rate limiting through firewalls and load balancers can provide additional protection against large-scale abuse attempts while application-level controls ensure proper enforcement of business logic restrictions. System administrators should also monitor email delivery logs for unusual patterns that may indicate exploitation attempts and implement proper alerting mechanisms to detect potential abuse before it causes significant damage. The fix implemented in version 1.0.1 addresses the core issue by introducing proper rate limiting controls that prevent excessive OTP generation while maintaining legitimate user access to password recovery functionality, thereby restoring the system's ability to provide secure authentication services without exposing itself to resource exhaustion attacks that could compromise the entire school management infrastructure.