What CVEs are caused by CWE-760?

8 recorded CVEs are attributed to CWE-760, including CVE-2020-28214, CVE-2023-22599, CVE-2024-38881.

What are the consequences of CWE-760?

Exploiting CWE-760 can lead to: Bypass Protection Mechanism.

Is CWE-760 actively exploited?

8 recorded CVEs are caused by CWE-760; none are currently in CISA's KEV catalog of actively exploited flaws.

Variant weakness

Incomplete

CWE-760: Use of a One-Way Hash with a Predictable Salt

The product uses a one-way cryptographic hash against an input that should not be reversible, such as a password, but the product uses a predictable salt as part of the input.

Last updated May 1, 2026

Recorded CVEs

With this primary weakness

KEVs

In the CISA KEV catalog

Not rated

Likelihood of exploit

Per MITRE

Variant

Abstraction

MITRE classification

Overview

This makes it easier for attackers to pre-compute the hash value using dictionary attack techniques such as rainbow tables, effectively disabling the protection that an unpredictable salt would provide. It should be noted that, despite common perceptions, the use of a good salt with a hash does not sufficiently increase the effort for an attacker who is targeting an individual password, or who has a large amount of computing resources available, such as with cloud-based services or specialized, inexpensive hardware. Offline password cracking can still be effective if the hash function is not expensive to compute; many cryptographic functions are designed to be efficient and can be vulnerable to attacks using massive computing resources, even if the hash is cryptographically strong. The use of a salt only slightly increases the computing requirements for an attacker compared to other strategies such as adaptive hash functions. See CWE-916 for more details.

Background

In cryptography, salt refers to some random addition of data to an input before hashing to make dictionary attacks more difficult.

Real-world CVEs

8 recorded CVEs are caused by CWE-760 (Use of a One-Way Hash with a Predictable Salt). The highest-severity and most recent are shown first. 2 new CWE-760 CVEs have been recorded so far in 2026 (1 in 2025).

Common consequences

What can happen when CWE-760 is exploited.

Bypass Protection Mechanism

Affects: Access Control

How it happens

When it is introduced

Typically introduced during these phases of the software lifecycle.

Implementation

How to prevent it

Practical mitigations for CWE-760, grouped by where in the lifecycle they apply.

Architecture and Design

Use an adaptive hash function that can be configured to change the amount of computational effort needed to compute the hash, such as the number of iterations ("stretching") or the amount of memory required. Some hash functions perform salting automatically. These functions can significantly increase the overhead for a brute force attack compared to intentionally-fast functions such as MD5. For example, rainbow table attacks can become infeasible due to the high computing overhead. Finally, since computing power gets faster and cheaper over time, the technique can be reconfigured to increase the workload without forcing an entire replacement of the algorithm in use.

Some hash functions that have one or more of these desired properties include bcrypt [REF-291], scrypt [REF-292], and PBKDF2 [REF-293]. While there is active debate about which of these is the most effective, they are all stronger than using salts with hash functions with very little computing overhead.

Note that using these functions can have an impact on performance, so they require special consideration to avoid denial-of-service attacks. However, their configurability provides finer control over how much CPU and memory is used, so it could be adjusted to suit the environment's needs.

Effectiveness: High

Implementation

If a technique that requires extra computational effort can not be implemented, then for each password that is processed, generate a new random salt using a strong random number generator with unpredictable seeds. Add the salt to the plaintext password before hashing it. When storing the hash, also store the salt. Do not use the same salt for every password.

Effectiveness: Limited — Be aware that salts will not reduce the workload of a targeted attack against an individual hash (such as the password for a critical person), and in general they are less effective than other hashing techniques such as increasing the computation time or memory overhead. Without a built-in workload, modern attacks can compute large numbers of hashes, or even exhaust the entire space of all possible passwords, within a very short amount of time, using massively-parallel computing and GPU, ASIC, or FPGA hardware.

How to detect it

Automated Static Analysis

Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)

Effectiveness: High

Illustrative examples

Real CVEs that MITRE cites as examples of this weakness.

CVE-2008-4905 — Blogging software uses a hard-coded salt when calculating a password hash.
CVE-2002-1657 — Database server uses the username for a salt when encrypting passwords, simplifying brute force attacks.
CVE-2001-0967 — Server uses a constant salt when encrypting passwords, simplifying brute force attacks.
CVE-2005-0408 — chain: product generates predictable MD5 hashes using a constant value combined with username, allowing authentication bypass.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about CWE-760.

What is CWE-760?: The product uses a one-way cryptographic hash against an input that should not be reversible, such as a password, but the product uses a predictable salt as part of the input.
What CVEs are caused by CWE-760?: 8 recorded CVEs are attributed to CWE-760, including CVE-2020-28214, CVE-2023-22599, CVE-2024-38881.
How do you prevent CWE-760?: Use an adaptive hash function that can be configured to change the amount of computational effort needed to compute the hash, such as the number of iterations ("stretching") or the amount of memory required. Some hash functions perform salting automatically. These functions can significantly increase the overhead for a brute force attack compared to intentionally-fast functions such as MD5. For example, rainbow table attacks can become infeasible due to the high computing overhead. Finally, since computing power gets faster and cheaper over time, the technique can be reconfigured to increase the workload without forcing an entire replacement of the algorithm in use.
How is CWE-760 detected?: Automated Static Analysis: Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
What are the consequences of CWE-760?: Exploiting CWE-760 can lead to: Bypass Protection Mechanism.
Is CWE-760 actively exploited?: 8 recorded CVEs are caused by CWE-760; none are currently in CISA's KEV catalog of actively exploited flaws.

References

Weakness data is sourced from the MITRE CWE catalog (v4.20). CVE associations are aggregated and kept current by RadicalNotion.AI.

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