CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-53544 — Trilium Notes is an open-source, cross-platform hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases

High CVSS 7.5

Trilium Notes is an open-source, cross-platform hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases. In versions below 0.97.0, a brute-force protection bypass in the initial sync seed retrieval endpoint allows unauthenticated attackers to guess the login password without triggering rate limiting. Trilium is a single-user app without a username requirement, and brute-force protection bypass makes exploitation much more feasible. Multiple features provided by Trilium (e.g. MFA, share notes, custom request handler) indicate that Trilium can be exposed to the internet. This is fixed in version 0.97.0.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-08-05
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-307

Affected products

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Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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