Time discrepancy in authentication responses in OpenSearch

published 2023-03-02 3 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-c6wg-cm5x-rqvj , EUVD-2023-0980

cvss: 5.3; version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.3%; EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 26%
public exploits: 0; none known

OpenSearch Security is a plugin for OpenSearch that offers encryption, authentication and authorization. There is an observable discrepancy in the authentication response time between calls where the user provided exists and calls where it does not. This issue only affects calls using the internal basic identity provider (IdP), and not other externally configured IdPs. Patches were released in versions 1.3.9 and 2.6.0, there are no workarounds.

Patch / fix

fixed in 3 links 1

maven org.opensearch.plugin:opensearch-security 1.3.9, 2.6.0
amazon opensearch 1.3.9, 2.6.0
amazon opensearch_security 1.3.9, 2.6.0

github.com/opensearch-project/security#2472 pull request

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-25806 updated 2026-01-13 cvss 5.3

opensearch: Time discrepancy in authentication responses

Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: yes
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 20 mo ago (2025-03-05)

Exploit prediction

0.33% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 26% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.0	5.3	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
NVD	3.1	5.3	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
GitHub	3.0	5.3	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
maven	org.opensearch.plugin:opensearch-security	<1.3.9 >=2.0.0, <2.6.0	1.3.9 2.6.0

Affected products

opensearch-project security

Classification

Weakness

CWE-208 Observable Timing Discrepancy
CWE-203 Observable Discrepancy

References

github.com /opensearch-project/security/pull/2472
web
github.com /opensearch-project/security/security/advisories/GHSA-c6wg-cm5x-rqvj
web, vendor-advisory
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2023-25806
advisory
github.com /opensearch-project/security
package

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary