Strapi is an open source headless content management system. In Strapi versions prior to 5.45.0, the rate-limit middleware in the users-permissions plugin derived its rate-limit key in part from ctx.request.body.email, including on routes whose body schema does not contain an email field (/auth/local, /auth/reset-password, /auth/change-password). An unauthenticated attacker could include an arbitrary email value in the request body to obtain a fresh rate-limit key per request, effectively bypassing per-IP throttling on those routes and enabling high-volume credential brute-force, password-reset code brute-force, and credential-stuffing attempts.

The rate-limit key was constructed as ${userIdentifier}:${requestPath}:${ctx.request.ip}, where userIdentifier = ctx.request.body.email. On routes that legitimately use email as their identifier (e.g. /auth/forgot-password, /auth/local/register), this scoping is correct. On routes that use a different identifier (identifier for login, code for password reset, currentPassword for password change), the email field was not part of the route contract, but the middleware still incorporated it into the key, allowing a caller to rotate the value and obtain a unique key on every request.

The patch in version 5.45.0 maintains an allow-list of routes that legitimately key on the email field and excludes that key component on every other route the middleware is mounted on. OAuth callback paths (/connect/*) are treated identifier-less. On routes outside the allow-list, the middleware now falls back to a fixed identifier-less key, ensuring per-IP throttling remains effective even when the request body is attacker-controlled.