Description

Use of a One-Way hash without a salt vulnerability in Pik Online Software Solutions Inc. Pik Online Portal allows Cryptanalysis. This issue affects Pik Online Portal: through 3.5.1.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-04T08:17:16.067Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-04T08:17:16.067Z",
  "executiveSummary": "Pik Online Portal versions through 3.5.1 contain a critical security vulnerability regarding the storage of credentials using one-way hashing algorithms without the application of a cryptographic salt.\nThis vulnerability, characterized as an implementation flaw in authentication security, facilitates cryptanalysis by enabling adversaries to utilize precomputed hash tables, such as Rainbow Tables, to derive plaintext passwords from intercepted hash values.\nThe risk implication is significant, as a successful compromise of the backend database or authentication logs allows an unauthorized actor to perform offline password cracking with minimal computational overhead.\nThe vulnerability is inherent to the application's credential storage mechanism, meaning no specific network exposure is required to target the vulnerability if the data store itself is accessed.\nThis vulnerability undermines the confidentiality of user identities within the Pik Online Portal, potentially leading to unauthorized access, privilege escalation, and lateral movement across the affected enterprise environment.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability lies in the improper implementation of cryptographic password storage within the Pik Online Portal authentication module. By omitting a unique, cryptographically strong salt for each user credential before passing it through a one-way hashing function, the application renders the stored hashes static and predictable.\nIn a secure implementation, a salt acts as a unique random value appended to the plaintext password prior to hashing, ensuring that identical passwords generate distinct hash outputs. Without this salt, identical passwords result in identical hashes across the entire user base, allowing an attacker who gains access to the database to perform bulk cryptanalysis.\nThe exploitation flow typically begins with an unauthorized acquisition of the application's user authentication database, often through secondary vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, unauthenticated database backups, or unauthorized file system access. Once the attacker possesses the list of usernames and their corresponding unsalted hashes, they can initiate a precomputation attack.\nBecause the hashes are unsalted, the attacker can compare the intercepted hashes against established Rainbow Tables—massive databases of precomputed plaintext-to-hash mappings. Since no salt is present to diversify the output, the success rate of these lookups is near absolute for common password strings. For more complex passwords, the attacker may employ brute-force or dictionary attacks with significantly higher efficiency than would be possible if unique salts had been applied.\nAffected components include the password storage routines and authentication verification functions within the Pik Online Portal versions up to 3.5.1. The vulnerability does not require active interaction with the live portal to exploit once the underlying data has been exfiltrated; the impact is immediate upon database exposure. Post-exploitation consequences include complete account takeover (ATO), where the attacker gains legitimate credentials for any user, including administrative accounts, bypassing multi-factor authentication controls if those controls rely solely on the underlying compromised password store."
}