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Improper Certificate Validation in hMailServer

7.4HighCNA
Exploited
No known exploitation
Fix
Fixed in 6.3.8
Who is exposed
Not reported

Do first: Upgrade to a fixed version: 6.3.8.

Published
Last modified
Reference
Last checked
24/100 · provisional
Unclear
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub

Summary

Progressive Robot Ltd's hMailServer does not load its configured CA certificate file when the file name contains non-ASCII characters, so with a MySQL or MariaDB database and certificate verification enabled, it does not check the database server's certificate against that CA. A remote attacker who can intercept the connection to the database server can read and modify traffic between hMailServer and its database, without logging in or any user action, though the attack is hard to carry out.

Written by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 from the sources below. Verify against them.

Read the original description

Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 through 6.3.7, with a MySQL or MariaDB database and TlsMode=verify-full, does not hand the database client the CA file that TlsCaFile names when the file's name contains a character outside ASCII on Linux, or above U+00FF on Windows, which allows an attacker who can intercept the connection to the database server to read and modify the traffic between hMailServer and its database, by presenting, with MariaDB Connector/C 3.4.2 to 3.4.10 as the client, a certificate from any authority, its own included, for any name, and otherwise a certificate for the database server's name issued by any certificate authority in the system's trust store. The server converted the name for the client with the C runtime's conversion in the C locale, which gives an empty string for such a name, and then set no CA file at all, without an error, while certificate verification stayed on, so the client - MariaDB Connector/C, bundled on Windows and the distribution's on Linux - verified the certificate of a database server over the network against the system's trust store instead of the configured CA; Connector/C 3.4.2 to 3.4.10 (bundled on Windows in 6.3.4 to 6.3.6) went further and, with no CA file, took a certificate within its dates whose issuer it could not find, for any name, with neither its chain nor its name checked and no password proof, when the server offered first a sign-in method that hashes the password, which an attacker in the middle chooses (MariaDB's CONC-853, fixed in Connector/C 3.4.11), and Connector/C 3.4 accepted from a MariaDB 11.4 or later server a certificate the store did not vouch for when that server proved it held the account's password; on a connection it treats as local (127.0.0.1, ::1, a Unix socket, a named pipe, and localhost on Windows), Connector/C 3.4.1 and later checked neither the certificate's issuer nor its name, so that a local attacker able to stand in for the database server could present any certificate within its dates of its own making. The settings line of hmailserver --check-database still named the configured file, and the application log said the certificate had been checked. With MariaDB Connector/C 3.4.1 to 3.4.9 as the client - bundled on Windows in 6.3.4 to 6.3.6, and the client of Linux distributions that have not patched it - the missing CA file also met the precondition of CVE-2026-107819, so that a certificate issued for any other name by a trusted authority was enough to obtain the database password. On Linux the file was found only when the server ran on glibc under a locale whose character set holds the name's characters (a UTF-8 locale, or a legacy 8-bit one the system has, in whose bytes the file is then named); with no locale, LC_ALL=C or a locale the system lacks, and on Alpine (musl), the connection failed instead. The configuration is not the default: TlsMode defaults to prefer, which checks no certificate.

cve.now Index

24Pcve.now Index 24 of 100 · methodology v3 · provisional
  • Exploitation?/40Unknown. No CISA SSVC exploitation rating yet
  • Exposure17/25No login or user action needed, reachable over the network without a login · Unknown: Advisories don't say whether default setups are affected
  • Reach?/20Unknown. No tracked technology or package matched
  • Severity7.4/10CVSS 7.4
  • No patch0/5No signal

What would change the score

  • Would score about 69 if added to CISA KEV
  • Would score about 64 if CISA's SSVC rates exploitation active
  • Would score about 29 if advisories confirm default setups are exposed

What to do

  • Upgrade to a fixed version: 6.3.8.

  • Workaround: Give TlsCaFile a path in ASCII alone

Check your systems with an agent

Paste this into a coding or ops agent. It checks your systems read-only and reports a table per asset.

Check whether my systems are affected by CVE-2026-126610 (Improper Certificate Validation in hMailServer), using the cve.now data below.

Rules: work read-only. Do not run exploit code, proof-of-concept scripts or scanners that send attack payloads, and do not change any configuration, package, image or deployment. Report findings only.

What cve.now has for CVE-2026-126610 (entry last updated 2026-11-11):
Affected:
- Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer: from 6.3.4, through 6.3.7
Fixed versions: 6.3.8.
Setup: unknown whether the bug needs a non-default feature or setting. Check the advisory.
Attacker needs: network access, no login, no user action.
Workaround: Give TlsCaFile a path in ASCII alone (source: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-126610)
CISA KEV: CVE-2026-126610 is not listed as of cve.now's last read.
This KEV status is for CVE-2026-126610 only. If you also check another CVE, look up its own KEV status; never assume it from this one.

How to check:
- Installed software: check what is actually running, not what a repo declares. Read the version from each host, container image and Kubernetes node (the binary's version output, the OS package database, image layers), and check whether the conditions above hold there. Distribution packages may carry a backported fix under an older version number; confirm against the distribution's own advisory.

Verify against the linked advisories before concluding, and cite the date you read each one:
- https://gitlab.com/hmailserver/hmailserver/-/work_items/112
- https://gitlab.com/hmailserver/hmailserver/-/releases/v6.3.8
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-126610
Do not conclude an asset is unaffected unless you checked it and the evidence covers both its version and the conditions above. If you could not check something, mark it unknown and say what is missing.

Report a table with one row per asset and these columns: Asset | Version or build | Status (affected, fixed, not applicable, unknown) | Compensating controls | Exposure (internet-facing, internal, none) | Evidence | Next action.

Entry: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-126610
For follow-up questions, use the cve.now MCP server at https://mcp.cve.now/mcp (no authentication), for example get_vulnerability with id CVE-2026-126610.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. First seen by cve.now

Affected versions

  • Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer

    From 6.3.4 · through 6.3.7

Evidence 4

CVE record · 2

Establishes: The identifier and description.

  1. Record
  2. Record

Other links · 2

  1. Link
  2. Link

Corrections

None so far.

Something wrong on this page? Report an error. Every fix is listed here.

Questions about CVE-2026-126610

Is CVE-2026-126610 being exploited?

It is not in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and CISA's SSVC assessment does not mark exploitation as active. That does not mean it has not been attacked: vendors and researchers can report attacks before CISA lists them. No public exploit code is tracked.Source: cve.now feed data

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-126610?

hMailServer: from 6.3.4 through 6.3.7.Source: cve.now feed data

How do I fix CVE-2026-126610?

Upgrade to hMailServer 6.3.8, which the vendor's fix quote names as the remedy. The facts give no other fixed version.Source: cve.org

Why do the sources disagree?

The description says the issue is reached through a local attack vector, but the CVSS vector lists the attack vector as network (AV:N). The sources conflict on how the flaw can be reached.Source: cve.org