CVE-2026-41319MailKit has STARTTLS Response Injection via unflushed stream buffer that enables SASL mechanism downgrade
- 6.5MediumCVSS base score
- 0.22%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 87% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- YesPublic exploitsa reference or SSVC says so
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.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. A reference of the record is tagged as an exploit. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Show the exploits1
References tagged exploit1 reference
- https://github.com/jstedfast/MailKit/security/advisories/GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMexploit
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 4 days later
· 4 days later
Published
- 1 day later
· 1 day 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 | Medium6.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | Medium5.9 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.22% · top 87% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 6.5.
Affected products
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- NuGetMailKitGHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr (opens in a new tab)
References
References1
- https://github.com/jstedfast/MailKit/security/advisories/GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMexploit
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-2026-25388 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr (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-2026-41319)Record last updated .