Authentication Bypass by Spoofing vulnerability in team-alembic ash_authentication allows an attacker who operates one identity-provider connection of a dynamic_oidc strategy to be signed in as a local user established through a different connection.
The strategy is meant to keep each connection in its own identity namespace by writing every UserIdentity row's strategy field as "<name>/<connection_id>", but that namespacing never takes effect. connection_id is populated only on the ephemeral runtime struct built per request in dynamic_oidc/plug.ex, and DynamicOidc.IdentityChange.change/3 re-fetches the strategy from the compile-time DSL through Info.strategy_for_action, yielding the persisted struct whose connection_id is its defstruct default of nil. OAuth2.identity_strategy_name/1 therefore falls back to the bare strategy name for both the identity write and the reads in oauth2/user_resolver.ex and oauth2/sign_in_preparation.ex. Since the identity resource's unique key is (uid, strategy), one row exists per sub across every connection, and the identity-match branch runs before any email check. Neither strategy handles iss, so nothing else distinguishes the issuers: OpenID Connect Core section 5.7 makes sub unique only within an issuer, so two connections numbering subjects independently share one subject space.
This issue affects ash_authentication: from 5.0.0-rc.10 before 5.0.0-rc.14.
| Software | Affected versions |
|---|---|
| team-alembic / ash_authentication | >= 5.0.0-rc.10, < 5.0.0-rc.14 |
A vulnerability database tells you what is broken. Attack surface management tells you where it is running: it discovers your internet-facing assets and flags the ones affected by issues like this one.
What is attack surface management? →A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.
CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.
A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.
Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.
Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.
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