CVE-2023-49278 — Umbraco.CMS
MEDIUMCVE-2023-49278 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Information Exposure vulnerability in Umbraco.CMS. A fix is available for Umbraco.CMS — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Umbraco CMS brute force exploit can be used to collect valid usernames
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-49278.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
Umbraco.CMS.NETUmbraco.CMS.NETUmbraco.CMSReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
A brute force exploit that can be used to collect valid usernames is possible.
Explanation of the vulnerability
It's a brute force exploit that can be used to collect valid usernames by using the “forgot password” function when trying to log into the Backoffice. If the username/email is known, it is easier to find the corresponding password. If an email address that was already used and registered by a user, is provided as an input, the server internal processing time takes longer. If the email address does not exist in the database of the registered users, the server would respond immediately.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | Umbraco.CMS | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.18.10 | 8.18.10dotnet add package Umbraco.CMS --version 8.18.10 |
| .NETNuGet | Umbraco.CMS | ≥ 9.0.0&&< 10.8.1 | 10.8.1dotnet add package Umbraco.CMS --version 10.8.1 |
| .NETNuGet | Umbraco.CMS | ≥ 11.0.0&&< 12.3.4 | 12.3.4dotnet add package Umbraco.CMS --version 12.3.4 |
Affected Products
umbraco cmsumbracoDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for Umbraco.CMS, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update Umbraco.CMS to 8.18.10 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-49278 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-49278 in your dependencies?
Find it across NuGet, including transitive dependencies.