MastodonApplication · Joinmastodon

CVE-2024-37903

HIGH · 8.2 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-07-05
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 4.1.18 / 4.2.10 or later.
See remediation →
91/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

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 is a self-hosted, federated microblogging platform. Starting in version 2.6.0 and prior to versions 4.1.18 and 4.2.10, by crafting specific activities, an attacker can extend the audience of a post they do not own to other Mastodon users on a target server, thus gaining access to the contents of a post not intended for them. Versions 4.1.18 and 4.2.10 contain a patch for this issue.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-862

The application checks who you are but not whether you're allowed to perform a given action, so any authenticated user can reach things meant for others. This is the classic “change the ID in the URL” bug. The fix is an authorization check on every request, evaluated against the acting user's permissions.

General guidance for the missing authorization class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

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:>= 2.6.0, < 4.1.18>= 4.2.0, < 4.2.10

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
High
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

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

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 4.1.18 / 4.2.10 or later
Fixed in 4.1.184.2.10
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

Mastodon 4.1.18 or 4.2.10 (depending on your current branch)

  1. 1. Backup your Mastodon database and files before proceeding with any upgrade.
  2. 2. Check your current Mastodon version by running `git rev-parse HEAD` or checking the admin interface.
  3. 3. For Mastodon 4.1.x deployments: Upgrade to version 4.1.18 by pulling the latest code for the v4.1 branch and running database migrations.
  4. 4. For Mastodon 4.2.x deployments: Upgrade to version 4.2.10 by pulling the latest code for the v4.2 branch and running database migrations.
  5. 5. After upgrading, verify the application is functioning correctly and review admin logs for any suspicious activity.
Caveat Review release notes for any breaking changes between your current version and the target version before upgrading

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

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — 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-2024-37903 — 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-2024-37903 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