Tidy: don't skip strong-password validation for whitespace-only / "0" input#233
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Tidy: don't skip strong-password validation for whitespace-only / "0" input#233dknauss wants to merge 1 commit into
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validate_strong_password() detects an empty/unchanged password field with `trim( $_POST['pass1'] )`. An all-whitespace value (e.g. " ") trims to '' and is treated as "no password set", so the function returns early and skips the length, zxcvbn, and Have I Been Pwned checks — while WordPress still saves the whitespace password. A user under an enforced strong-password policy can defeat it this way. (The same early-return also fires for a password of "0", which is falsy after trim.) Only a genuinely empty field means "no change", so gate on the string being non-empty instead of on trim().
dknauss
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Summary
Passwords::validate_strong_password()decides whether a password change is present usingtrim( $_POST['pass1'] ). That treats an all-whitespace value (" ") — and, becausetrim()'s result is used as a boolean, a value of"0"— as "no password set", so the function returns early and skips its length / zxcvbn / Have I Been Pwned checks for those inputs.This is harmless in practice — WordPress core already rejects a whitespace-only password on every path, so one can't actually be set or used through the UI:
edit_user()trimspass1and only savesif ( ! empty( $pass1 ) )→" "becomes a no-op change."The password cannot be a space or all spaces."beforereset_password()is called.wp_authenticate()trims the entry andwp_authenticate_username_password()rejects an empty password.So this isn't a policy bypass — it's a small correctness issue: the blank-field test should key off an empty field, not
trim(), so the plugin's own checks don't silently skip for whitespace-only /"0"input.Fix
Only a genuinely empty field means "no change". Legitimate password changes are unaffected.