dbcve.org
Enterprise LinuxOperating system · Redhat

CVE-2024-49394

MEDIUM · 5.3 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-11-12
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
62/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
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
In mutt and neomutt the In-Reply-To email header field is not protected by cryptographic signing which allows an attacker to reuse an unencrypted but signed email message to impersonate the original sender.

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-347

The application accepts signed data without properly verifying the signature, so an attacker can forge or tamper with content that the system is meant to trust — tokens, updates, licences. Everything built on that trust then becomes unreliable. Remediation is verifying every signature against the correct key and rejecting anything that does not validate.

General guidance for the improper signature verification 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
Enterprise LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 8.0= 9.0
MuttApplication
Affected:all versions
NeomuttApplication
Affected:all versions

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
Low
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/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
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix Moderate confidence
  1. Check your current mutt or neomutt version using: mutt -v or neomutt -v
  2. For Neomutt: Apply the fix from GitHub PR #4221 (https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/pull/4221) by updating to a version that includes the commit fixing In-Reply-To header signature verification
  3. For Mutt: Monitor upstream Mutt development for an equivalent patch addressing CWE-347 for In-Reply-To header handling
  4. If using vendor-packaged versions (e.g., Enterprise Linux), check for vendor security advisories or updates that address this issue
  5. After applying the patch, verify that cryptographic signatures (PGP/S/MIME) now properly cover the In-Reply-To header field

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

We can apply and verify the patch for your build — typical engagement from $1,600. Get the patch applied

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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-2024-49394 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