Directus is a real-time API and App dashboard for managing SQL database content. The password reset mechanism of the Directus backend allows attackers to receive a password reset email of a victim user, specifically having it arrive at a similar email address as the victim with a one or more characters changed to use accents. This is due to the fact that by default MySQL/MariaDB are configured for accent-insensitive and case-insensitive comparisons. This vulnerability is fixed in version 10.8.3.

Affected: npm: directus

## Password reset vulnerable to accent confusion

The password reset mechanism of the Directus backend is implemented in a way where combined with (specific, need to double check if i can work around) configuration in MySQL or MariaDB. As such, it allows attackers to receive a password reset email of a victim user, specifically having it arrive at a similar email address as the victim with a one or more characters changed to use accents.

This is due to the fact that by default MySQL/MariaDB are configured for accent-insenstive and case-insensitve comparisons.

MySQL weak comparison: ```sql select 1 from directus_users where 'julian@cure53.de' = 'julian@cüre53.de'; ```

This is exploitable due to an error in the API using the supplied email address for sending the reset password mail instead of using the email from the database.

### Steps to reproduce:

1. If the attacker knows the email address of the victim user, i.e., `julian@cure53.de`. (possibly just the domain could be enough for an educated guess) 2. A off-by-one accented domain `cüre53.de` can be registered to be able to receive emails. 3. With this email the attacker can request a password reset for `julian@cüre53.de`. ```http POST /auth/password/request HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com [...] {"email":"julian@cüre53.de"} ``` 4. The supplied email (julian@cüre53.de) gets checked against the database and will match the non-accented email `julian@cure53.de` and will continue to email the password reset link to the provide…