CVE-2026-81826 in Flowintel
Summary
by MITRE • 08/27/2026
Affected versions of Flowintel do not revoke existing authenticated sessions when a user’s password is changed.
This means that if an attacker already possesses a valid session—for example, from prior access or a stolen session token—the victim changing their password does not terminate that attacker’s access. The session remains usable until it expires naturally. The upstream commit describes this directly as:
“session keeps working until it expires.”
The fix detects password changes and explicitly invokes _invalidate_user_sessions(user.id) after the database update. This is applied in both edit_user_core() and admin_edit_user_core().
Version impacted >=3.3.0
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/27/2026
Flowintel versions starting from 3.3.0 exhibit a critical session management flaw where existing authenticated sessions are not invalidated upon password changes by the affected user. This vulnerability stems from an incomplete implementation of security best practices regarding credential rotation, allowing previously established authentication tokens to remain valid despite the underlying credentials being altered. The root cause lies in the application logic within the edit_user_core and admin_edit_user_core functions, which fail to trigger session termination procedures after a successful password update operation. Consequently, any active sessions associated with that user account persist on both the server side and potentially in client-side storage or cookies until their natural expiration time is reached.
The operational impact of this flaw is significant for environments where users frequently change passwords due to policy requirements or suspected compromise. If an attacker has already obtained a valid session token through methods such as cross-site scripting, network sniffing on unencrypted connections, or physical access to an unlocked workstation, they can continue to authenticate and interact with the application even after the legitimate user changes their password. This effectively neutralizes one of the primary defensive mechanisms intended to revoke unauthorized access during incident response scenarios. The attacker retains full privileges associated with that session until it expires, which could range from minutes to days depending on the configured session lifetime settings.
This vulnerability aligns closely with CWE-613, Insufficient Session Expiration, and falls under MITRE ATT&CK technique T1078, Valid Accounts, specifically in the context of maintaining persistence through existing credentials. The failure to invalidate sessions upon credential change represents a gap in identity lifecycle management that allows for prolonged unauthorized access. To mitigate this risk, administrators should ensure they are running patched versions where the _invalidate_user_sessions function is correctly invoked following password updates. Additionally, organizations can implement compensating controls such as reducing session timeout durations and enforcing multi-factor authentication to limit the window of opportunity for attackers exploiting stale sessions while waiting for patch deployment or version upgrades.