Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-22246

Info Disclosure in Joinmastodon Mastodon ≤ 4.3.17

Published
08 January 2026
Modified
22 January 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 6.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0023 14th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-22246 is a medium-severity Insertion of Sensitive Information Into Sent Data (CWE-201) vulnerability in Joinmastodon Mastodon. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 14th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and AC-6 (Least Privilege) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Mastodon 4.3 added notifications of severed relationships, allowing end-users to inspect the relationships they lost as the result of a moderation action. The code allowing users to download lists…

more

of severed relationships for a particular event fails to check the owner of the list before returning the lost relationships. Any registered local user can access the list of lost followers and followed users caused by any severance event, and go through all severance events this way. The leaked information does not include the name of the account which has lost follows and followers. This has been fixed in Mastodon v4.3.17, v4.4.11 and v4.5.4.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
T1213.006 Databases Collection
Adversaries may leverage databases to mine valuable information.
Why these techniques?

Vuln in public-facing Mastodon server enables unauthorized data access from its relationship/moderation repository.

Confidence: MEDIUM · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-23964Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2026-25540Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2026-22245Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2026-41259Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2026-27477Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2026-33869Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2026-23962Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2026-27468Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2024-34535Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon
CVE-2023-42450Same product: Joinmastodon Mastodon

Affected Assets

joinmastodon
mastodon
≤ 4.3.17 · 4.4.0 — 4.4.11 · 4.5.0 — 4.5.4

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • AC-3 Access Enforcement
  • AC-6 Least Privilege
  • AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 1 hardening rule · 1 OS baseline
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V14.2.3

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Directly enforces authorization checks to ensure only the owner of a severance event can retrieve its relationship list, blocking the missing owner validation flaw.

prevent

Restricts each local user to only the minimal data required for their own account, preventing access to any other user's severed-relationship records.

prevent

Enforces information-flow rules that would block delivery of severance-event data to any subject lacking the required ownership attribute.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly prevent insertion of sensitive data into application outputs and messages.

DE.CM-09 partial match
prevents

Monitoring runtime data flows and outputs can detect sensitive data being transmitted.

PR.DS-02 partial match
prevents

Protecting data-in-transit can include filtering or encrypting to avoid exposing sensitive content.

PR.DS-10 partial match
prevents

Protecting data-in-use includes removing confidential values before they are processed or sent.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

prevents

Data-masking techniques can prevent sensitive values from appearing in transmitted payloads.

mitigates

Classification identifies sensitive data so it is not inadvertently transmitted.

mitigates

Labelling makes sensitive data visible to developers and prevents accidental inclusion in outbound messages.

mitigates

Information-transfer rules directly govern what data may be sent to external parties.

mitigates

PII-protection requirements reduce the chance of sending personal data to unauthorized recipients.

mitigates

DLP controls inspect and block outbound flows that contain sensitive information.

References