MastodonApplication · Joinmastodon

CVE-2022-46405

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2022-12-04
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 4.0.2 or later.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Public exploit Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Mastodon through 4.0.2 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (large Sidekiq pull queue) by creating bot accounts that follow attacker-controlled accounts on certain other servers associated with a wildcard DNS A record, such that there is uncontrolled recursion of attacker-generated messages.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
MastodonApplication
Affected:<= 4.0.2

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 4.0.2
Recommended fix High confidence

Mastodon 4.0.3 or later stable release

  1. 1. Back up your Mastodon database and any critical configuration files.
  2. 2. Stop the Mastodon services (web, sidekiq, streaming).
  3. 3. Update Mastodon to version 4.0.3 or later using your package manager or by pulling the latest release.
  4. 4. Run database migrations if required: `RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:migrate`.
  5. 5. Precompile assets: `RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile`.
  6. 6. Restart all Mastodon services.
  7. 7. Verify the update by checking the Sidekiq queue behavior and ensuring the follow/recursion issue is resolved.
Caveat Minimal - 4.0.3 is a security patch release; no major breaking changes expected

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can identify the exact fixed release, upgrade, and verify it in staging — typical engagement from $1,950. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2022-46405 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2022-46405 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data