SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityDeferred

CVE-2026-85500

Authentication Bypass by Primary Weakness vulnerability in team-alembic AshAuthentication allows an unconfirmed user to obtain a session, defeating a mandatory email confirmation requirement.

CRITICAL 9.1EPSS 0.55%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.55%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

Authentication Bypass by Primary Weakness vulnerability in team-alembic AshAuthentication allows an unconfirmed user to obtain a session, defeating a mandatory email confirmation requirement. AshAuthentication.Strategy.Password.Actions.check_user/2 decides whether the attribute named by require_confirmed_with is set using a bare is_nil(Map.get(user, value)). When that attribute is not selected on the loaded record Map.get/2 returns %Ash.NotLoaded{}, and when a field policy denies it for the current actor it returns %Ash.ForbiddenField{}. Neither is nil, so the rejection branch is skipped and sign-i require_confirmed_with is enforced in two places, and neither holds in every configuration. sign_in_with_token and register are checked only inside AshAuthentication.Strategy.Password.Actions, not on the action itself, so any caller that invokes the action directly skips the check. An API layer such as AshGraphql or AshJsonApi invokes the action directly, so this applies to the default configuration. Where a check does run it compares the confirmation attribute against nil. That attribute holds %Ash.NotLoaded{} or %Ash.ForbiddenField{} when it sets select_by_default?: false, when an API layer narrows the read's select, or when a field policy hides it from the sign-in actor. Neither struct is nil, so those configurations read every user as confirmed. This issue affects ash_authentication: from 4.3.8 before 4.15.0 and from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14.

CVSS 4.0
9.1 CRITICALCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
EPSS
0.55% probability · 45th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-305
Source
6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
EPSS trend
0%3%5%19 September 2026: 0.55%19 September 202619 September 2026

EPSS 0.5% since 19 September 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.