What is CVE-2020-26214?

CVE-2020-26214 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Alerta, classified under Improper Authentication. CVSS score: 9.1/10. Published 2020-11-06.

How severe is CVE-2020-26214?

Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.1 out of 10.

Is CVE-2020-26214 known to be exploited?

7 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Auth bypass in Alerta

CVE-2020-26214

In Alerta before version 8.1.0, users may be able to bypass LDAP authentication if they provide an empty password when Alerta server is configure to use LDAP as the authorization provider. Only deployments where LDAP servers are configured to allow unauthenticated authentication mechanism for anonymous authorization are affected. A fix has been implemented in version 8.1.0 that returns HTTP 401 Unauthorized response for any authentication attempts where the password field is empty. As a workaround LDAP administrators can disallow unauthenticated bind requests by clients.

Vulnerability class: Broken Authentication

Published 2020-11-06 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.1 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.659 (99.3th percentile), scored 2026-10-18.

High probability of exploitation in the next 30 days — patch promptly. 99th percentile — 99.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.659 · newest: 0.659 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Alerta — versions < 8.1.0
Alerta Project

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-287 — Improper Authentication

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

github.com/alerta/alerta/security/advisories/GHSA-5hmm-x8q8-w5jh (Third Party Advisory)
github.com/alerta/alerta/issues/1277 (Third Party Advisory)
github.com/alerta/alerta/pull/1345 (Third Party Advisory)
github.com/alerta/alerta/commit/2bfa31779a4c9df2fa68fa4d0c5c909698c5ef65 (Patch, Third Party Advisory)
pypi.org/project/alerta-server/8.1.0/ (Third Party Advisory)
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4513 (Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-26214?: CVE-2020-26214 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Alerta, classified under Improper Authentication. CVSS score: 9.1/10. Published 2020-11-06.
How severe is CVE-2020-26214?: Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.1 out of 10.
Is CVE-2020-26214 known to be exploited?: 7 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.