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High

Keycloak vulnerable to Plaintext Storage of User Password

  • Disclosed: 12.09.2023
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:22

A flaw was discovered in Keycloak Core package. When a user registers itself through registration flow, the "password" and "password-confirm" field from the form will occur as regular attributes in the users attributes. The password is also created, but the user attributes must not be there. This way, any entities (all users and clients with proper rights/roles) are able to retrieve the users passwords in clear-text.

Impact

Passwords for self-registered users are stored as cleartext attributes associated with the user.

Mitigation

Disable self-registration for users in all realms until patched.

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.keycloak:keycloak-core >= 22.0.2, < 22.0.3 22.0.3

References

CVSS score 8.8/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-256, CWE-319
Platform
Java / Kotlin (Maven)
Package
org.keycloak:keycloak-core
Disclosed
12.09.2023
Updated
11.10.2026 12:22

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-5q66-v53q-pm35 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: org.keycloak:keycloak-core

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

All (49) in the archive
Total entries
49
First → latest
10.2018 02.2025
Without a fix
5
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 3
  • High 14
  • Medium 31
  • Low 1

Disclosures per year

Severity:
  1. Keycloak mTLS Authentication Bypass via Reverse Proxy TLS Termination
    High · 7.1 CVE-2024-10039 < 26.0.6 26.0.6
  2. Keycloak Denial of Service vulnerability
    High · 6.5 CVE-2023-6841 < 24.0.0 24.0.0
  3. Keycloak vulnerable to Plaintext Storage of User Password this entry
    High · 8.8 CVE-2023-4918 >= 22.0.2, < 22.0.3 22.0.3
  4. Keycloak allows anyone to register new security device or key for any user by using WebAuthn password-less login flow
    High · 7.5 CVE-2021-3632 < 15.1.0 15.1.0
  5. keycloak vulnerable to unauthorized login via mail server setup
    Critical · 9.1 CVE-2019-14837 < 8.0.0 8.0.0
  6. Authentication Bypass in keycloak
    High · 8.8 CVE-2020-27826 < 12.0.0 12.0.0
  7. Temporary Directory Hijacking Vulnerability in Keycloak
    High · 7.3 CVE-2021-20202 < 13.0.0 13.0.0
  8. Improper Input Validation in Keycloak
    High · 8.8 CVE-2020-1714 < 11.0.0 11.0.0
  9. Improper privilege management in Keycloak
    High · 8.1 CVE-2020-14389 < 12.0.0 12.0.0
  10. Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions in Keycloak
    High · 7.2 CVE-2019-10170 < 8.0.0 8.0.0
  11. keycloak Self Stored Cross-site Scripting vulnerability
    Critical · 9.6 CVE-2021-20195 < 13.0.0 13.0.0
  12. Predictable password in Keycloak
    Critical · 9.8 CVE-2020-1731 < 8.0.2 8.0.2
  13. Improper Input Validation and Cross-Site Request Forgery in Keycloak
    High · 8.8 CVE-2019-10199 < 7.0.0 7.0.0
  14. Improper Authentication in Keycloak
    High · 8.1 CVE-2018-14637 < 4.6.0 4.6.0
  15. Keycloak vulnerable to uncontrolled resource consumption
    High · 7.5 CVE-2014-3651 < 1.0.3 1.0.3
  16. Keycloak vulnerable to infinite loop based Denial of Service
    High · 7.5 CVE-2017-2646 < 2.5.5 2.5.5
  17. Improper Authentication in org.keycloak:keycloak-core
    High · 8.1 CVE-2016-8609 < 2.3.0 2.3.0

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