KeycloakApplication · Redhat

CVE-2023-0105

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-01-13
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
74/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
A flaw was found in Keycloak. This flaw allows impersonation and lockout due to the email trust not being handled correctly in Keycloak. An attacker can shadow other users with the same email and lockout or impersonate them.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · moderate confidence

Keycloak fails to properly enforce email uniqueness across users, allowing an attacker to register or modify an account using an email address that already belongs to another user. This enables account impersonation or denial of service by locking legitimate users out of their accounts.

MitigationConfigure Keycloak to enforce unique email addresses at the realm level and review existing user databases for duplicate email entries to remediate any existing shadowed accounts.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
KeycloakApplication
Affected:all versions

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
Low

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Verify realm email uniqueness setting
    Access Keycloak Admin Console, navigate to Realm Settings > Login, and check if 'Duplicate emails' is set to 'Permitted' or if there is an option to enforce unique email addresses that is disabled
    Affected if Email uniqueness is not enforced (the setting allows duplicate emails or the enforcement toggle is off)
  2. Query user database for duplicate emails
    Run a database query to find users with duplicate email addresses, for example: SELECT email, COUNT(*) FROM user_entity WHERE email IS NOT NULL GROUP BY email HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
    Affected if Any results are returned showing multiple users share the same email address
  3. Check Keycloak version
    Use 'bin/kc.sh --version' or check the server log at startup to determine the installed Keycloak version
    Affected if Any version of Red Hat Keycloak is running (all versions are affected before proper configuration)
  4. Review authentication flow configuration
    Navigate to Authentication > Flows in Admin Console and verify if the 'Register' or 'Registration' flow has any email uniqueness validation configured
    Affected if No email uniqueness validation step exists in the registration flow

A user is affected if email uniqueness is not enforced at the realm level OR duplicate email entries exist in the user database.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Configure Keycloak to enforce unique email addresses at the realm level and review existing user databases for duplicate email entries to remediate any existing shadowed accounts.

Fix this in Keycloak Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation4.0 h
  • Implementation8.0 h
  • Testing4.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
18.0 hours of engineering $3,200
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Scan for this in your stack

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dbcve dependency scanner

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-0105 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data