Description

HCL Hive is affected by a missing rate limit which could allow an attacker unauthorized access via brute-force or credential stuffing attacks, or cause a denial of service.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "5.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-24T15:16:37.693Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-24T15:16:37.693Z",
  "executiveSummary": "HCL Hive is affected by a missing rate limit vulnerability that exposes the application to automated brute-force attacks, credential stuffing, and potential denial-of-service (DoS) conditions. This security flaw stems from the absence of request throttling or rate-limiting mechanisms on critical endpoints, allowing malicious actors to execute high-frequency automated requests without encountering artificial delays or account lockouts. The primary impact includes unauthorized system access via compromised credentials and service degradation resulting from resource exhaustion. The vulnerability affects HCL Hive and poses significant risk implications regarding data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Attackers require network access to the target application and leverage automated scripting capabilities to bombard vulnerable endpoints with rapid authentication attempts or resource-intensive queries. Remediation requires implementing robust rate-limiting controls, request throttling, and IP-based blocking mechanisms to restrict excessive request volumes.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of the vulnerability lies in the lack of input rate-limiting controls within the architectural design of HCL Hive. Specifically, the application fails to restrict the frequency of incoming requests originating from a single IP address, user session, or identifier within a defined temporal window. This architectural oversight permits unauthenticated or authenticated adversaries to submit high volumes of requests instantaneously. The exploitation method primarily revolves around brute-force and credential stuffing attacks targeting authentication interfaces, alongside high-concurrency requests designed to exhaust server-side resources and trigger a denial-of-service condition. The attack flow begins when an attacker identifies the vulnerable endpoint within HCL Hive that lacks request throttling. The adversary then deploys automated tooling, such as multi-threaded scripts or botnets, to transmit extensive sequences of login payloads or resource requests. Because the server processes each incoming request sequentially or concurrently without validating the rate of transmission, it consumes CPU, memory, and database connections at an unsustainable rate. In credential-stuffing scenarios, the attacker systematically iterates through large dictionaries of leaked usernames and passwords, bypassing any defensive delays that would typically impede automated discovery. In denial-of-service scenarios, the sustained volume of resource-heavy requests saturates the processing queue, leading to service latency or complete application unavailability for legitimate users. The vulnerable component encompasses the request handling and authentication routing layers of HCL Hive. Depending on the specific deployment configuration, network exposure is typically public-facing via HTTP or HTTPS protocols. Authentication and privilege requirements vary based on the targeted endpoint; however, the lack of rate limiting primarily impacts perimeter defenses where unauthenticated attackers attempt to bypass authentication boundaries or exhaust server resources."
}