The login() function in MISP's UsersController.php contained insufficient HTTP method validation for several security-critical code paths. The original code used an allowlist approach, checking only for specific HTTP methods (POST and PUT) before enforcing bruteforce protection, email one-time-password (OTP) verification, and login-failure logging. Because the checks were not exhaustive, an unauthenticated attacker could issue login requests using other HTTP methods and bypass all three security controls simultaneously. Specifically:
- the bruteforce blocklisting check and attempt counter were skipped, allowing unlimited credential-guessing attempts without being rate-limited or blocked
- the email OTP two-factor authentication step was skipped, defeating the second factor of authentication
- login-failure events were neither logged nor counted, removing the audit trail and the mechanism that would normally trigger a blocklist entry.
The security impact is the effective disabling of brute-force protection and multi-factor authentication for any attacker who can craft an HTTP request with a non-POST/PUT method to the login endpoint, potentially leading to credential compromise and unauthorized access to the MISP instance.
Version affected: <2.5.47
The fix replaces the allowlist-style HTTP method checks (is POST or PUT) with a denylist approach (is NOT GET) in all three security-critical branches of the login() function. This ensures that every non-GET HTTP method—regardless of whether it is POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS, or any other—triggers the bruteforce protection, email OTP verification, and login-failure logging code paths, closing the method-based bypass.