VulnerabilityPublished 24 Apr 2026

CVE-2026-41319: jstedfast MailKit · Injection

Affects jstedfast MailKitSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium : upgrade to 4.16.0 when convenient.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 06:59 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.5Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 12% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 4.16.0

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: High
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 24 Apr 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 29 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade MailKit and mailkit to 4.16.0.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
jstedfastMailKit	Affected <4.16.0	Fixed in 4.16.0
NuGetmailkit`pkg:nuget/mailkit`Other threats	Affected <4.16.0	Fixed in 4.16.0

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

Upgrade MailKit to version 4.16.0 or later, where this vulnerability is patched. Since the vulnerability is fixed in this version, no additional mitigation steps are required beyond applying the official update. Patch status is not explicitly stated but the vendor has released version 4.16.0 to address the issue, indicating an official fix is available.

Description

MailKit is a cross-platform mail client library built on top of MimeKit. A STARTTLS Response Injection vulnerability in versions prior to 4.16.0 allows a Man-in-the-Middle attacker to inject arbitrary protocol responses across the plaintext-to-TLS trust boundary, enabling SASL authentication mechanism downgrade (e.g., forcing PLAIN instead of SCRAM-SHA-256). The internal read buffer in `SmtpStream`, `ImapStream`, and `Pop3Stream` is not flushed when the underlying stream is replaced with `SslStream` during STARTTLS upgrade, causing pre-TLS attacker-injected data to be processed as trusted post-TLS responses. Version 4.16.0 patches the issue.

Impact

An attacker positioned as a Man-in-the-Middle can inject malicious protocol responses during the STARTTLS upgrade, causing the client to accept attacker-injected data as if it were legitimate TLS-protected responses. This enables downgrading the SASL authentication mechanism to weaker methods like PLAIN, which can compromise authentication security. There is no direct confidentiality impact reported, but integrity of the authentication negotiation is affected. No known exploits are reported in the wild at this time.

CWE-74Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component (Injection) (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighOWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product constructs all or part of a command, data structure, or record using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify how it is parsed or interpreted when it is sent to a downstream component.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Requirements
Programming languages and supporting technologies might be chosen which are not subject to these issues.
Implementation
Utilize an appropriate mix of allowlist and denylist parsing to filter control-plane syntax from all input.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
SQL Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention in Java (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables (opens in a new tab)
Server Side Include (SSI) Injection (opens in a new tab)
HTTP Request Splitting (opens in a new tab)
Command Line Execution through SQL Injection (opens in a new tab)
Double Encoding (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

github.com/jstedfast/MailKit/security/advisories/GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 1 May 2026, 20:39 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-74

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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