Description
MailKit is a cross-platform mail client library built on top of MimeKit. A STARTTLS Response Injection vulnerability in versions prior to 4.16.0 allows a Man-in-the-Middle attacker to inject arbitrary protocol responses across the plaintext-to-TLS trust boundary, enabling SASL authentication mechanism downgrade (e.g., forcing PLAIN instead of SCRAM-SHA-256). The internal read buffer in `SmtpStream`, `ImapStream`, and `Pop3Stream` is not flushed when the underlying stream is replaced with `SslStream` during STARTTLS upgrade, causing pre-TLS attacker-injected data to be processed as trusted post-TLS responses. Version 4.16.0 patches the issue.
Published: 2026-04-24
Score: 6.5 Medium
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: Authentication mechanism downgrade via injected STARTTLS responses
Action: Assess Impact
AI Analysis

Analysis and contextual insights are available on OpenCVE Cloud.

Remediation

No vendor fix or workaround currently provided.

Additional remediation guidance may be available on OpenCVE Cloud.

Tracking

Sign in to view the affected projects.

Advisories
Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-9j88-vvj5-vhgr MailKit has STARTTLS Response Injection via unflushed stream buffer that enables SASL mechanism downgrade
History

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Jstedfast
Jstedfast mailkit
Vendors & Products Jstedfast
Jstedfast mailkit

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 02:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Fri, 24 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description MailKit is a cross-platform mail client library built on top of MimeKit. A STARTTLS Response Injection vulnerability in versions prior to 4.16.0 allows a Man-in-the-Middle attacker to inject arbitrary protocol responses across the plaintext-to-TLS trust boundary, enabling SASL authentication mechanism downgrade (e.g., forcing PLAIN instead of SCRAM-SHA-256). The internal read buffer in `SmtpStream`, `ImapStream`, and `Pop3Stream` is not flushed when the underlying stream is replaced with `SslStream` during STARTTLS upgrade, causing pre-TLS attacker-injected data to be processed as trusted post-TLS responses. Version 4.16.0 patches the issue.
Title MailKit has STARTTLS Response Injection via unflushed stream buffer that enables SASL mechanism downgrade
Weaknesses CWE-74
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N'}


Subscriptions

Jstedfast Mailkit
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-04-25T01:46:35.002Z

Reserved: 2026-04-20T14:01:46.671Z

Link: CVE-2026-41319

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-04-25T01:46:30.490Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Awaiting Analysis

Published: 2026-04-24T04:16:20.400

Modified: 2026-04-25T03:16:04.600

Link: CVE-2026-41319

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-04-28T14:30:33Z

Weaknesses