GHSA-vhr6-pvjm-9qwf is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.4) CWE-312 vulnerability in django-two-factor-auth. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-vhr6-pvjm-9qwf is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
User passwords are stored in clear text in the Django session
Real-World Exposure
django-two-factor-authReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
django-two-factor-auth versions 1.11 and before store the user's password in clear text in the user session (base64-encoded). The password is stored in the session when the user submits their username and password, and is removed once they complete authentication by entering a two-factor authentication code. This means that the password is stored in clear text in the session for an arbitrary amount of time, and potentially forever if the user begins the login process by entering their username and password, and then leaves before entering their two-factor authentication code.
The severity of this issue depends on which type of session storage you have configured: in the worst case, if you're using Django's default database session storage, then users' password are stored in clear text in your database. In the best case, if you're using Django's signed cookie session, then users' passwords are only stored in clear text within their browser's cookie store. In the common case of using Django's cache session store, the users' password are stored in clear text in whatever cache storage you have configured (typically Memcached or Redis).
Patches
Upgrade to version 1.12 to resolve this issue.
After upgrading, users should be sure to delete any clear text passwords that have been stored. For example, if you're using the database session backend, you'll likely want to delete any session record from the database and purge that data from any database backups or replicas.
In addition, affected organizations who have suffered a database breach while using an affected version should inform their users that their clear text passwords have been compromised. All organizations should encourage users whose passwords were insecurely stored to change these passwords on any sites where they were used.
Workarounds
Switching Django's session storage to use signed cookies instead of the database or cache lessens the impact of this issue, but should not be done without a thorough understanding of the security tradeoffs of using signed cookies rather than a server-side session storage. There is no way to fully mitigate the issue without upgrading.
References
For an explanation of why storing cleartext password is a substantial vulnerability: Hashing Passwords: One-Way Road to Security.
For documentation on configuring the Django session storage engine: Django session documentation.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- Open an issue in the repo
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | django-two-factor-auth | all versions | 1.12 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for django-two-factor-auth. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update django-two-factor-auth to 1.12 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-vhr6-pvjm-9qwf is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-vhr6-pvjm-9qwf is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-vhr6-pvjm-9qwf. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-vhr6-pvjm-9qwf in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-vhr6-pvjm-9qwf across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.