See how mastodon compares to other vendors in security performance
Latest version: 4.7.1
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.4.21, 4.5.14, 4.6.4, and 4.7.0-beta.1, PrivateAddressCheck.privateaddress? in app/lib/privateaddresscheck.rb normalized IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses but did not recognize IPv4-compatible IPv6 addresses with IPAddr#ipv4compat?. An attacker could supply an address in the omitted range to bypass the ALLOWEDPRIVATEADDRESSES protection and make Mastodon send HTTP requests to loopback interfaces, potentially accessing private resources and services. Exploitation requires a system that supports the obsolete IPv4-compatible IPv6 mechanism. This issue is fixed in versions 4.4.21, 4.5.14, 4.6.4, and 4.7.0-beta.1.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. From 4.6.0-beta.1 until 4.6.4 and 4.7.0-beta.1, any logged-in local user could use the show action in app/controllers/admin/collectionscontroller.rb to access personally identifying information about another local user in a collection because the controller used the general collection policy instead of the admin collection policy namespace. The exposed data included the other user's current email address and last-used IP address. This issue is fixed in versions 4.6.4 and 4.7.0-beta.1.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.4.21, 4.5.14, 4.6.4, and 4.7.0-beta.1, the administrative statistics endpoints handled by Api::V1::Admin::MeasuresController and Api::V1::Admin::RetentionController checked authorization only after beginning expensive calculations. Anonymous callers could submit keys, startat, and endat parameters that caused long-running SQL queries in Admin::Metrics::Measure, Admin::Metrics::Retention, and Admin::Metrics::Dimension::BaseDimension, allowing repeated requests to exhaust server resources. This issue is fixed in versions 4.4.21, 4.5.14, 4.6.4, and 4.7.0-beta.1.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.5.11, 4.4.18, and 4.3.24, a DoS can be triggered by (Uncaught Exception vulerability), due to missing exception handling in the math sanitizer. Malformed <math> nodes can result in a DoS of a whole server or targeted users services, depending on the type of action that includes the malformed nodes and the services interacting with it. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.5.11, 4.4.18, and 4.3.24.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. From 4.3.0 until 4.5.11 and 4.4.18, Mastodon has a feature to let websites credit authors of their articles. To prevent false attribution claims, Mastodon uses the attributionDomains JSON-LD term, however, an error in how it is defined makes Linked Data Signatures on the toot:attributionDomains property ineffective. An attacker can arbitrarily modify the attributionDomains value of a legitimately signed Update activity and bypass Mastodon’s signature verification. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.5.11 and 4.4.18.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23, Mastodon's normalization of incoming activities signed with Linked-Data Signatures does not sufficiently protect the activities from a certain class of spoofing, allowing threat actors to remove JSON entries from valid signed activities from a third-party actor. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23, when using Ruby versions older than 3.4, PrivateAddressCheck.privateaddress? returns false for IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses (::ffff:a.b.c.d) corresponding to some private IPv4 addresses, depending on Ruby version, this can include loopback, RFC1918 private networks, and link-local space. An attacker who controls DNS for any domain can publish an AAAA record with such a mapped address; any outbound HTTP fetch Mastodon performs against that hostname then opens a real TCP connection to the underlying IPv4 address, including 127.0.0.1 and cloud-metadata endpoints such as 169.254.169.254. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23, Mastodon's normalization of incoming activities signed with Linked-Data Signatures does not sufficiently protect the activities from a certain class of spoofing, allowing attackers to re-arrange a valid signed JSON-LD activity from a third-party actor to have it processed differently. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23, the list of disallowed IP address ranges was lacking an IP address range that can be used to reach local IP addresses. An attacker can use an IP address in the affected range to make Mastodon perform HTTP requests against loopback interfaces, potentially allowing access to otherwise private resources and services. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.5.10, 4.4.17, and 4.3.23.
Latest version: 4.6.7
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In versions there is a missing condition in the check if remote accounts consented to be featured in a remote Collection could lead to attackers bypassing the check and faking consent. An attacker could forge the FeatureAuthorization object that is used to verify consent to be featured in a Collection and thus make it appear as if an account is allowed to be in a Collection when it actually is not. While the FeatureAuthorization must reside on the same domain as the object it is for, a check is missing to make sure said object is actually the same as in the Collection item. This allows an attacker to forge the authorization. Mastodon servers are affected only if running the main branch or nightly builds who have opted into testing the experimental "Collections" feature by setting the environment variable EXPERIMENTALFEATURES to a value including collections. This has been patched in version 4.6.0-beta.1.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to v4.5.9, v4.4.16, and v4.3.22, Mastodon allows restricting new user sign-up based on e-mail domain names, and performs basic validation on e-mail addresses, but fails to restrict characters that are interpreted differently by some mailing servers. This vulnerability is fixed in v4.5.9, v4.4.16, and v4.3.22.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In versions on the 4.5.x branch prior to 4.5.8 and on the 4.4.x branch prior to 4.4.15, an attacker that knows of a quote before it has reached a server can prevent it from being correctly processed on that server. The vulnerability has been patched in Mastodon 4.5.8 and 4.4.15. Mastodon 4.3 and earlier are not affected because they do not support quotes.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to versions 4.5.8, 4.4.15, and 4.3.21, an unauthenticated Open Redirect vulnerability (CWE-601) exists in the /web/ route due to improper handling of URL-encoded path segments. An attacker can craft a specially encoded URL that causes the application to redirect users to an arbitrary external domain, enabling phishing attacks and potential OAuth credential theft. The issue occurs because URL-encoded slashes (%2F) bypass Rails path normalization and are interpreted as host-relative redirects. Versions 4.5.8, 4.4.15, and 4.3.21 patch the issue.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. FASP registration requires manual approval by an administrator. In versions 4.4.0 through 4.4.13 and 4.5.0 through 4.5.6, an unauthenticated attacker can register a FASP with an attacker-chosen baseurl that includes or resolves to a local / internal address, leading to the Mastodon server making requests to that address. This only affects Mastodon servers that have opted in to testing the experimental FASP feature by setting the environment variable EXPERIMENTALFEATURES to a value including fasp. An attacker can force the Mastodon server to make http(s) requests to internal systems. While they cannot control the full URL that is being requested (only the prefix) and cannot see the result of those requests, vulnerabilities or other undesired behavior could be triggered in those systems. The fix is included in the 4.4.14 and 4.5.7 releases. Admins that are actively testing the experimental "fasp" feature should update their systems. Servers not using the experimental feature flag fasp are not affected.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to versions 4.3.19, 4.4.13, 4.5.6, Mastodon is vulnerable to web cache poisoning via Rails.cache. When AUTHORIZEDFETCH is enabled, the ActivityPub endpoints for pinned posts and featured hashtags have contents that depend on the account that signed the HTTP request. However, these contents are stored in an internal cache and reused with no regards to the signing actor. As a result, an empty response generated for a blocked user account may be served to requests from legitimate non-blocked actors, or conversely, content intended for non-blocked actors may be returned to blocked actors. This issue has been patched in versions 4.3.19, 4.4.13, 4.5.6.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. By nature, Mastodon performs a lot of outbound requests to user-provided domains. Mastodon, however, has some protection mechanism to disallow requests to local IP addresses (unless specified in ALLOWEDPRIVATEADDRESSES) to avoid the "confused deputy" problem. The list of disallowed IP address ranges was lacking some IP address ranges that can be used to reach local IP addresses. An attacker can use an IP address in the affected ranges to make Mastodon perform HTTP requests against loopback or local network hosts, potentially allowing access to otherwise private resources and services. This is fixed in Mastodon v4.5.4, v4.4.11, v4.3.17 and v4.2.29.
End of life: 2/20/2027, Latest version: 4.5.17
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In Mastodon version 4.4, support for verifiable quote posts with quote controls was added, but it is possible for an attacker to bypass these controls in Mastodon versions prior to 4.4.8 and 4.5.0-beta.2. Mastodon internally treats reblogs as statuses. Since they were not special-treated, an attacker could reblog any post, then quote their reblog, technically quoting themselves, but having the quote feature a preview of the post they did not get authorization for with all of the affordances that would be otherwise denied by the quote controls. This issue has been patched in versions 4.4.8 and 4.5.0-beta.2.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In Mastodon before 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27, the streaming server accepts serving events for public timelines to clients using any valid authentication token, even if those tokens lack the read:statuses scope. This allows OAuth clients without the read scope to subscribe to public channels and receive public timeline events. The impact is limited, as this only affects new public posts published on the public timelines and requires an otherwise valid token, but this may lead to unexpected access to public posts in a limited-federation setting. This issue has been patched in versions 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27. No known workarounds exist.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In versions before 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27, disabling or suspending a user account does not disconnect the account from the streaming API. This allows disabled or suspended accounts to continue receiving real-time updates through existing streaming connections and to establish new streaming connections, even though they cannot interact with other API endpoints. This undermines moderation actions, as administrators expect disabled or suspended accounts to be fully disconnected from the service. This issue has been patched in versions 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27. No known workarounds exist.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In Mastodon before 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27, when an administrator resets a user account's password via the command-line interface using bin/tootctl accounts modify --reset-password, active sessions and access tokens for that account are not revoked. This allows an attacker with access to a previously compromised session or token to continue using the account after the password has been reset. This issue has been patched in versions 4.2.27, 4.3.14, and 4.4.6. No known workarounds exist.
Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub Mastodon which facilitates LDAP configuration for authentication. In versions 3.1.5 through 4.2.24, 4.3.0 through 4.3.11 and 4.4.0 through 4.4.3, Mastodon's rate-limiting system has a critical configuration error where the email-based throttle for confirmation emails incorrectly checks the password reset path instead of the confirmation path, effectively disabling per-email limits for confirmation requests. This allows attackers to bypass rate limits by rotating IP addresses and send unlimited confirmation emails to any email address, as only a weak IP-based throttle (25 requests per 5 minutes) remains active. The vulnerability enables denial-of-service attacks that can overwhelm mail queues and facilitate user harassment through confirmation email spam. This is fixed in versions 4.2.24, 4.3.11 and 4.4.3.
End of life: 12/17/2026, Latest version: 4.4.24
Mastodon is a self-hosted, federated microblogging platform. In versions prior to 4.1.23, 4.2.16, and 4.3.4, when the visibility for domain blocks/reasons is set to "users" (localized English string: "To logged-in users"), users that are not yet approved can view the block reasons. Instance admins that do not want their domain blocks to be public are impacted. Versions 4.1.23, 4.2.16, and 4.3.4 fix the issue.
Mastodon is a self-hosted, federated microblogging platform. Starting in version 4.2.0 and prior to versions 4.2.16 and 4.3.4, the rate limits are missing on /auth/setup. Without those rate limits, an attacker can craft requests that will send an email to an arbitrary addresses. Versions 4.2.16 and 4.3.4 fix the issue.
End of life: 4/8/2025, Latest version: 4.1.25
End of life: 4/8/2025, Latest version: 4.1.25
Mastodon 4.1.x before 4.1.17 and 4.2.x before 4.2.9 allows a bypass of rate limiting via a crafted HTTP request header.