CVE-2025-48187: RAGFlow Account Takeover Due to Brute-Force Attack Vulnerability

Overview

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system has recently identified a critical flaw, CVE-2025-48187, that allows potential attackers to take over user accounts on systems using RAGFlow up to version 0.18.1. This vulnerability is particularly dangerous because it enables attackers to initiate brute-force attacks against email verification codes without any rate limiting, thereby facilitating unauthorized account registration, login, and password reset. Given the widespread use of RAGFlow, this vulnerability puts a vast number of systems and sensitive data at risk.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-48187
Severity: Critical (9.1 CVSS score)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Account takeover, potential system compromise, and data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

RAGFlow | 0.18.1 and below

How the Exploit Works

The exploit takes advantage of a key vulnerability in the email verification process of RAGFlow. Specifically, the system generates six-digit codes for account registration, login, and password reset actions. An attacker can conduct successful brute-force attacks against these codes, as there is no rate limiting in place to limit the number of attempts that can be made. This lack of rate limiting allows attackers to attempt all possible six-digit combinations until they find the correct code, facilitating unauthorized access to user accounts.

Conceptual Example Code

The following pseudocode provides a conceptual example of how an attacker might exploit this vulnerability:

for attempt in range(1000000):  # A six-digit code has one million possibilities
verification_code = str(attempt).zfill(6)  # Pad with leading zeros
response = requests.post(
'https://target.example.com/verify',
data={'verification_code': verification_code},
)
if response.status_code == 200:
print(f'Success! The verification code is {verification_code}.')
break

In this example, the attacker iteratively generates and sends verification codes from 000000 to 999999 to the verification endpoint until they receive a successful response.

Mitigation Guidance

Users of RAGFlow are strongly advised to update to the latest version of the software, which contains a patch addressing this vulnerability. In situations where immediate patching is not feasible, implementing a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as a temporary mitigation strategy. These systems can be configured to detect and block abnormal amounts of verification attempts, thereby preventing successful brute-force attacks. However, these measures are not a substitute for patching the underlying vulnerability.