MailKit has STARTTLS Response Injection via unflushed stream buffer that enables SASL mechanism downgrade
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · High · None
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and GitHub.
Summary
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.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- Poc
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| jstedfast | MailKit | before 4.16.0 | 4.16.0 | Patch available | CNA |
| — | MailKit (NuGet) | before 4.16.0 | 4.16.0 | Patch available | GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr |
- MailKit Vendorjstedfast Affected before 4.16.0 Fixed in 4.16.0 Patch available CNA
- MailKit (NuGet) Vendor— Affected before 4.16.0 Fixed in 4.16.0 Patch available GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr
Remediation
- Fix · CNA MailKit (jstedfast) Fixed in 4.16.0
- Fix · GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr MailKit (NuGet) Fixed in 4.16.0 Advisory →
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-41319
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr
References
Sources
- CVE-2026-41319 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-41319 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
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