A Broken Access Control vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to retrieve the bcrypt password hash of every administrator account with a single POST request. The /_api/user-collection/create-first-user setup endpoint remains publicly accessible once initial configuration is complete and returns full serialized user data in the JSON response body.
Affected version:
>= 2.0.0-alpha.1, <= 2.0.0-beta.272.0.0-beta.27Any Automad installation reachable over HTTP is at risk no prior account, credentials, or special network position are required to exploit this vulnerability.
Potential impacts include:
2.0.0-beta.27, the first release introducing TOTP-based two-factor authentication. If an attacker successfully recovers a plaintext password, two-factor authentication can be bypassed entirely. Only version 2.0.0-beta.27 is affected by this specific issue.Update to version 2.0.0-beta.28 or later.
This issue was reported privately and fixed prior to public disclosure.
{
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-200",
"CWE-306"
],
"github_reviewed": true,
"github_reviewed_at": "2026-05-27T21:32:31Z",
"nvd_published_at": "2026-05-28T19:16:39Z",
"severity": "HIGH"
}