CVE-2026-104875: Ente: Accepted emergency contact can bypass the recovery notice period
Ente provides end-to-end encrypted cloud services and security tools. Prior to server image 2026.07.09, the POST /emergency-contacts/approve-recovery endpoint authorized approval using a client-supplied userID and updated an emergency recovery session using only its client-supplied recovery-session UUID. An accepted emergency contact could submit the contact's own identifier, transition the victim's session from WAITING to READY, clear waittill, retrieve recovery information, and continue account recovery before the owner-configured notice period expired. Exploitation of the approval bypass required the victim to have previously added and accepted the attacker as an emergency contact, and it did not create recovery rights for an arbitrary account. Separately, the same insufficiently scoped update pattern affected the reject and stop recovery transitions, allowing a user who knew another recovery-session UUID to potentially cancel a session to which the user was not a party. This issue is fixed in server image 2026.07.09.
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Upgrade
Upgrade
Ente server imageto a version that resolves this vulnerability.Fixed in 2026.07.09
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
Who could exploit the recovery-notice bypass?
The attacker had to be an emergency contact that the victim had previously added and accepted. The flaw did not grant recovery rights over arbitrary accounts.
What could an accepted emergency contact do with this flaw?
They could approve a recovery using their own identifier and a client-supplied recovery-session UUID, changing the victim's session to READY and clearing the configured wait_till value. This allowed recovery information to be retrieved and recovery to continue before the owner-configured notice period expired.
Are recovery-session actions other than approval affected?
Yes. Reject and stop-recovery transitions used the same insufficiently scoped update pattern, so a user who knew another recovery-session UUID could potentially cancel a session they were not party to.
Which server image fixes the issue?
The issue is fixed in Ente server image 2026.07.09.