CVE-2023-26490mailcow is vulnerable to shell command injection via xoauth2 authentication in imapsync
- 7.3HighCVSS base score
- 2.2%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 17% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
mailcow is a dockerized email package, with multiple containers linked in one bridged network. The Sync Job feature - which can be made available to standard users by assigning them the necessary permission - suffers from a shell command injection. A malicious user can abuse this vulnerability to obtain shell access to the Docker container running dovecot. The imapsync Perl script implements all the necessary functionality for this feature, including the XOAUTH2 authentication mechanism. This code path creates a shell command to call openssl. However, since different parts of the specified user password are included without any validation, one can simply execute additional shell commands. Notably, the default ACL for a newly-created mailcow account does not include the necessary permission. The Issue has been fixed within the 2023-03 Update (March 3rd 2023). As a temporary workaround the Syncjob ACL can be removed from all mailbox users, preventing from creating or changing existing Syncjobs.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 8 days later
· 8 days later
Published
- 24 months later
· 24 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High7.3 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 2.2% · top 17% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.3.
Affected products
- affected < 2023-03
References
References2
- https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized/security/advisories/GHSA-3j2f-wf52-cjg7 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized/releases/tag/2023-03 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2023-30292 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2023-26490)Record last updated .