CVE-2023-36462

Mastodon's verified profile links can be formatted in a misleading way

State
Published
Severity
5.4 Medium
Published
Jul 6, 2023
Updated
Oct 24, 2024
Reserved
Jun 21, 2023

Read the record on cve.org

Description

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Starting in version 2.6.0 and prior to versions 3.5.9, 4.0.5, and 4.1.3, an attacker can craft a verified profile link using specific formatting to conceal arbitrary parts of the link, enabling it to appear to link to a different URL altogether. The link is visually misleading, but clicking on it will reveal the actual link. This can still be used for phishing, though, similar to IDN homograph attacks. Versions 3.5.9, 4.0.5, and 4.1.3 contain a patch for this issue.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.4 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:NGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

Affected Products

ProductVersions
mastodonmastodon
  • >= 2.6.0, < 3.5.9Affected
  • >= 4.0.0, < 4.0.5Affected
  • >= 4.1.0, < 4.1.3Affected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.