diff --git a/backend/requirements.txt b/backend/requirements.txt
index 5cb3fb3..489725f 100644
--- a/backend/requirements.txt
+++ b/backend/requirements.txt
@@ -9,6 +9,14 @@ pydantic==2.10.3
 pydantic-settings==2.7.0
 python-jose[cryptography]==3.3.0
 passlib[bcrypt]==1.7.4
+# passlib 1.7.4 (last release, unmaintained since ~2020) detects its bcrypt
+# backend via bcrypt.__about__.__version__, which bcrypt>=4.1 removed --
+# hashing/verifying a password then raises "password cannot be longer than
+# 72 bytes" (a misleading downstream symptom of the real AttributeError:
+# module 'bcrypt' has no attribute '__about__') on every call. Without this
+# pin, `pip install -r requirements.txt` silently grabs whatever the latest
+# bcrypt is and breaks register/login outright. Pin below 4.1 explicitly.
+bcrypt==4.0.1
 python-multipart==0.0.20
 email-validator==2.2.0
 httpx==0.28.1