Timing Attack Affecting lightrag-hku package, versions [,1.5.5)
Threat Intelligence
Snyk has a proof-of-concept or detailed explanation of how to exploit this vulnerability.
The probability is the direct output of the EPSS model, and conveys an overall sense of the threat of exploitation in the wild. The percentile measures the EPSS probability relative to all known EPSS scores. Note: This data is updated daily, relying on the latest available EPSS model version. Check out the EPSS documentation for more details.
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Test your applications- Snyk IDSNYK-PYTHON-LIGHTRAGHKU-21693624
- published24 Oct 2026
- disclosed22 Sept 2026
- creditUnknown
Introduced: 22 Sep 2026
CVE-2026-85725 (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade lightrag-hku to version 1.5.5 or higher.
Overview
lightrag-hku is a LightRAG: Simple and Fast Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Timing Attack via the verify_password function in lightrag/api/passwords.py, which compares plaintext AUTH_ACCOUNTS passwords using Python's == operator. This operator short-circuits on the first mismatched byte, leaking password length and content through response timing. Additionally, AuthHandler.verify_password in lightrag/api/auth.py returns early for unknown usernames without performing any comparison, making valid usernames distinguishable from invalid ones by the approximately 100ms bcrypt verification delay, enabling username enumeration.
Note: This is only exploitable in deployments using unhashed (plaintext) passwords in AUTH_ACCOUNTS.