Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessAuthenticate via SASL-PLAIN with low-privilege account
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ExploitSet victim JID as unvalidated authzid
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ExecutionServer grants session as impersonated user
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ImpactRead/send messages and act as victim
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A07:2025 - Authentication Failures
ASVS 5.0
V6 - Authentication Anti-spoofing controls
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Defense Evasion The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires (1) the SASL-PLAIN authentication mechanism to be enabled/accepted by the ejabberd server, and (2) the attacker to possess valid credentials for at least one account (PR:L) to establish an authenticated session. Given those, the attacker supplies an arbitrary victim identity in the SASL authzid (authorization identity) parameter, which the server fails to validate against the authenticated user, granting impersonation of any user. Limiting factors: a valid account is mandatory (no fully unauthenticated path), and the mechanism applies to SASL-PLAIN specifically - deployments that disable PLAIN or enforce authzid=authcid binding would not be exploitable. Affects ejabberd versions 0 through 26.04. |
| Impact | This is a credentialed authentication/authorization flaw rather than a fully unauthenticated takeover. The CVSS 4.0 vector (AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N) indicates network-reachable, low-complexity exploitation that nonetheless requires the attacker to already hold a valid low-privilege account (PR:L) to open an authenticated SASL-PLAIN session - so it is not drive-by remote code execution but a privilege/identity-escalation issue usable by any legitimate user or anyone able to obtain a single account. The exploit maturity metric E:P signals a proof-of-concept stage, consistent with the NSIDE advisory reference, so publicly available exploit code exists but there is no CISA KEV listing and no EPSS value supplied, meaning there is no evidence of widespread active exploitation at this time. The impact metrics are high (VC:H/VI:H and subsequent-system SC:H/SI:H/SA:H), reflecting that impersonating arbitrary users - including potentially administrators - breaks the server's entire identity model. Net assessment: a genuine high-priority issue for any multi-tenant/federated ejabberd deployment because the privilege barrier (one valid account) is low and the blast radius is total account impersonation, but it is a notch below the worst-case because PR:L is required rather than PR:N. Note one discrepancy to verify: the input Tags label this 'Information Disclosure,' whereas the description describes user impersonation (improper authorization), which also enables integrity actions (sending messages as a victim), not merely disclosure. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker who holds (or registers) a single low-privilege ejabberd account authenticates using the SASL-PLAIN mechanism and sets the authzid (authorization identity) field to a targeted victim's JID; because the server fails to validate that the authenticated identity is permitted to act as the authzid, the attacker is logged in and acts as the impersonated user. A proof-of-concept is referenced in the NSIDE advisory, and because attack complexity is low this can be performed with a trivially modified XMPP client once valid credentials are available. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Oct 02, 2026
User impersonation in the ProcessOne ejabberd XMPP server, affecting all releases from the initial version through 26.04, allows any party that holds valid credentials for a single account to authenticate as an arbitrary other user by supplying an unchecked authzid value in the SASL-PLAIN exchange. Because the server fails to bind the requested authorization identity to the authenticated one, a low-privileged, authenticated attacker can act with the confidentiality and integrity privileges of any targeted account - including administrative or federated identities - across the XMPP service. The flaw is not listed in CISA KEV (no confirmed active exploitation), although the reported CVSS 4.0 vector carries an exploit-maturity metric of Proof-of-Concept (E:P), indicating proof-of-concept-level exploit code maturity; the independent assessment rates it CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N, framing it as a credentialed authentication/authorization flaw rather than a fully unauthenticated takeover.
RemediationAI
Upgrade to the vendor-released patched version, ejabberd 26.07 (see the release notes at https://github.com/processone/ejabberd/releases#release-26.07), and review the technical details in NSIDE-SA-2026-004 (https://www.nsideattacklogic.de/advisories/NSIDE-SA-2026-004/); restart the service and re-verify that no stale binaries remain in place. If immediate upgrade is not possible, the most direct compensating control is to stop offering SASL-PLAIN on the client-to-server listener - in ejabberd.yml, add PLAIN to disable_sasl_mechanisms on the relevant c2s listeners and retain SCRAM-SHA-1/SCRAM-SHA-256 or EXTERNAL (SASL certificate auth) - accepting the trade-off that legacy or minimalist XMPP clients that only implement PLAIN will no longer be able to log in, so validate client compatibility before enforcing this in production. Because exploitation requires a valid account (CVSS PR:L) and the impersonation is authenticated, tighten account provisioning in parallel: disable open/self-registration, remove dormant and shared accounts, and enforce strong, unique credentials so an attacker cannot cheaply obtain the one account needed to pivot. Treat all accounts on the affected server as potentially compromised if the instance was exposed pre-patch - rotate credentials, review roster/subscription and MUC affiliation changes, and audit server logs for SASL authentication events where the authzid differs from the authcid, which is the signature of this attack. Finally, restrict XMPP client ports (5222/5223 and BOSH/WebSocket endpoints) to known networks where feasible, noting that this measures network exposure only and does not remediate the underlying authorization flaw.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
The issue lives in the SASL authentication layer of ejabberd, an Erlang-based XMPP (Jabber) server from ProcessOne used for enterprise and federated instant messaging. Under SASL PLAIN (RFC 4616), a client submits three fields: an optional authorization identity (authzid), the authentication identity (authcid) plus password, and the client transmits them base64-encoded - typically inside a TLS-protected stream. RFC 6120 places an explicit obligation on XMPP servers to validate authzid: when it is present and differs from authcid, the server must verify that the authenticated account is actually authorized to act as the requested identity before completing the bind. ejabberd ≤ 26.04 does not enforce that check, so a successful PLAIN authentication for one account can be followed by an arbitrary authzid that is accepted at face value, conflating authentication with authorization. No CWE identifier was supplied in the source data, but the root-cause class corresponds to missing authorization validation on a user-controlled identity parameter (improper/incorrect authorization, i.e. CWE-863 / CWE-287 family), exploited via network-reachable XMPP client-to-server ports (5222/5223 and, where applicable, WebSocket/BOSH endpoints). The supplied CPE cpe:2.3:a:processone:ejabberd:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* covers all unpatched versions up to and including 26.04.
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Severity by source
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:P
Requires one valid low-privilege account (PR:L) over the network at low complexity; impersonation crosses the authorization boundary into other accounts (S:C) with high confidentiality and integrity impact and no direct availability loss.
Primary rating from Vendor (NCSC.ch).
CVSS VectorVendor: NCSC.ch
DescriptionCVE.org
User Impersonation in ProcessOnes XMMP Server ejabberd <= 26.04 allows an attacker to impersonate arbitrary users via unvalidated authzid parameter in SASL-PLAIN mechanism.
Executive ViewAI
The ProcessOne ejabberd XMPP server - deployed across all releases up to and including 26.04 - contains a user-impersonation flaw that lets anyone holding credentials for a single ordinary account authenticate as any other user on the service, including administrators and federated partners. Because no vendor patch is yet available, every organization running ejabberd must treat its messaging trust model as broken: audit trails, administrative actions, and inter-domain federated traffic can no longer be reliably attributed to the identity that appears to have performed them. Leadership should care because the affected system is typically a core real-time communications and internal-presence platform, and the loss of identity assurance undermines both incident forensics and any downstream control that relies on XMPP identity.
No vendor-released patch identified at time of analysis. Interim mitigations: disable or block SASL-PLAIN in favor of SASL SCRAM or SASL EXTERNAL with client certificates; enforce a proxy/gateway check that rejects any SASL-PLAIN exchange where the requested authzid is not identical to the authenticated username; restrict federation to explicitly trusted domains and limit administrative identities to the minimum necessary; require credential rotation for high-trust, administrative, and federated accounts; enable and retain authentication logs capturing authzid versus authenticated identity, and alert on mismatches or on anomalous administrative session activity.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Authentication bypass attacks exploit flaws in the verification mechanisms that control access to systems and applications.
ejabberd before 2.1.13 does not enforce the starttls_required setting when compression is used, which causes clients to
The TLS driver in ejabberd before 2.1.12 supports (1) SSLv2 and (2) weak SSL ciphers, which makes it easier for remote a
EUVD-2026-91582
GHSA-339c-8fr4-g2w4
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
Exploit-DB