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.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 3.1 Base Score: 6.5
- CVSS 3.1 Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N)
Prioritise with Active Threat Intelligence
With curated Threat Intelligence, you can see which vulnerabilities truly put you at risk, prioritize what matters most, and act before attackers do.
Explore Intelligence Hub