CVE-2026-2402 in PowerChute Serial Shutdown
Summary
by MITRE • 04/14/2026
CWE-307 Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts vulnerability exists that would allow an attacker to gain access to the user account by performing an arbitrary number of authentication attempts with different credentials on a sequence of requests to multiple endpoints.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 04/16/2026
This vulnerability represents a critical weakness in authentication controls that directly violates the principle of least privilege and proper access management. The flaw manifests as an insufficient mechanism to prevent brute force or credential stuffing attacks across multiple endpoints, allowing unauthorized users to systematically attempt authentication with various credential combinations without effective rate limiting or account lockout measures. Such a condition creates an environment where attackers can exploit the absence of proper session management and authentication throttling controls to eventually compromise user accounts through repeated login attempts.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from the absence of robust authentication rate limiting mechanisms across the application's authentication endpoints. When users attempt to authenticate through multiple sequential requests, the system fails to track or restrict the frequency of these attempts, creating a pathway for automated attack tools to cycle through potential credentials at an arbitrary pace. This weakness operates at the intersection of inadequate session management and insufficient account lockout policies, where the system does not maintain state information to detect or prevent excessive authentication attempts. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it affects multiple endpoints simultaneously, indicating a systemic flaw in the authentication architecture rather than an isolated issue within a single component.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple account compromise to potentially enable broader system infiltration and data exfiltration. Attackers can leverage this weakness to perform credential stuffing attacks against large user bases, where they systematically test stolen credential pairs across multiple authentication points until successful access is achieved. The vulnerability creates a persistent threat vector that can be exploited over extended periods, as there are no mechanisms to detect or prevent the accumulation of failed authentication attempts that would typically trigger security alerts. This condition allows for the potential exploitation of weak or reused credentials, particularly in environments where users employ the same passwords across multiple services or where password policies are insufficiently enforced.
Mitigation strategies must address both the immediate authentication control weaknesses and the underlying architectural issues that permit unlimited authentication attempts. Organizations should implement comprehensive rate limiting mechanisms across all authentication endpoints, establishing thresholds for failed authentication attempts that trigger account lockout procedures or temporary access restrictions. The solution requires deployment of authentication throttling controls that track failed attempts per user account or IP address, with configurable time-based reset mechanisms. Additionally, implementing multi-factor authentication can significantly reduce the impact of credential compromise, while establishing monitoring systems that detect unusual authentication patterns can provide early warning of potential attacks. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-307's classification of improper restriction of excessive authentication attempts and maps to attack techniques in the MITRE ATT&CK framework under credential access and privilege escalation categories, emphasizing the need for layered defensive measures including account lockout policies, behavioral analytics, and proper session management controls.