DroneAware's Improper Account Activation in Registration and SSO Flows Leads to Account Takeover

Summary

DroneAware is a drone detection platform. The centralized DroneAware server backing droneaware.io was vulnerable to an account pre-hijacking attack in which an attacker could register an account using a victim's email address with an attacker-controlled password before the victim completed account activation. When the legitimate owner later activated the account, either by clicking the email verification link or by logging in via Google SSO, the attacker-set password became fully valid, enabling silent and persistent account takeover without any notification to the victim. The vulnerability was fixed server-side on 2025-05-20; no user action is required. Node binaries and self-hosted detection nodes are not affected. There are no workarounds; the fix was deployed server-side and no client-side mitigation is applicable.