Medium (4.7) in torchbox wagtail. EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Fixed in wagtail 2.7.3, 2.8.2, 2.9.
In Wagtail before versions 2.7.3 and 2.8.2, a potential timing attack exists on pages or documents that have been protected with a shared password through Wagtail's "Privacy" controls. This password check is performed through a character-by-character string comparison, and so an attacker who is able to measure the time taken by this check to a high degree of accuracy could potentially use timing differences to gain knowledge of the password. This is [understood to be feasible on a local network, but not on the public internet](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/iAaq0pvHXuA/fpUuwjK3i2wJ).
Privacy settings that restrict access to pages/documents on a per-user or per-group basis (as opposed to a shared password) are unaffected by this vulnerability.
This has been patched in 2.7.3, 2.8.2, 2.9.
Severity
CVSS 3.1
4.7 medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
EPSS
0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 16% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-31)