jakubmanczak 5a92740785 mitigate sidechannel timing attack for basic auth ...

Information on whether a user with a given handle exists or not could be
collected by checking the difference between response times of
auth-required endpoints with and without a real handle being passed into
Basic auth. This is because the time-expensive password hash would only
be computed for users that exist, lengthening the response time. In
local testing, this was a difference of 8ms vs. 35-60ms.

A hash is now computed even if a user with the requested handle doesn't
exist, mitigating the issue and leaving only negligible differences
inbetween all response times, from which no information can be obtained.

2026-02-24 14:49:30 +01:00

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