Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts in hMailServer
- Exploited
- No known exploitation
- Fix
- No fix listed
- Who is exposed
- Not reported
- Published
- Last modified
- Whether it needs action now or is a reference record, by fixed rules, with why. Last checked is when cve.now last re-read it.What do these mean? →
- Reference
- Last checked
- A 0-100 score for how much a CVE matters across the industry: exploitation, exposure, how widely the software is used, severity and whether a fix exists.What do these mean? →
- 27/100 · provisional
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
Summary
A remote attacker who does not need to log in can keep guessing account passwords through the hMailServer web services listener's HTTPS sign-in, even after the server has banned the attacker's address. The attacker reaches the flaw over the network on the listener's HTTPS port.
Written by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 from the sources below. Verify against them.
Read the original description
The web services listener of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.3 through 6.3.7 does not apply the server's IP ranges to the connections it accepts, which allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to go on guessing account passwords at the listener's sign-ins after the auto-ban has banned the attacker's address. The listener is off by default (WebServicesHttpPort and WebServicesHttpsPort 0). From 6.3.3 its CardDAV, and from 6.3.4 its CalDAV and its Outlook Autodiscover answer to a request that carries credentials, sign an account in with HTTP Basic over HTTPS. A failed sign-in there counts towards the auto-ban as a failed logon on any other protocol does: when the failures counted from one address reach MaxInvalidLogonAttempts (3 within 30 minutes by default), the server writes an IP range that refuses the address for AutoBanMinutes (60 by default), and the SMTP, POP3, IMAP and ManageSieve listeners refuse it. The web services listener asked no IP range when it accepted a connection (in 6.3.3 nothing, from 6.3.4 the country policy alone), so it went on serving such an address, whether its ban had been earned there or on another protocol, and also an address that an administrator's IP range allowing nothing holds. Each failed sign-in there closed only its own connection, and the next connection was accepted, during the ban and after it. The firewall rule and command the auto-ban can drive (AutoBanFirewall and AutoBanCommand, off by default) are told only the SMTP, POP3 and IMAP ports, so that the firewall rule and the packaged hook did not close the listener's ports, and the fail2ban jail packaged for Linux (off by default) lists only the mail and ManageSieve ports. The only limit left on the guesses at one account there was the per-name lockout (AccountLockoutThreshold in hMailServer.ini, 0, off, by default), which has a separate defect fixed in the same release. The flaw is reached on the listener's HTTPS port: behind a TLS-terminating proxy the listener sees the proxy's address for every client, and a ban never named the client there.
cve.now Index
- Exploitation?/40Unknown. No CISA SSVC exploitation rating yet
- Exposure17/25No login or user action needed per the CVSS vector, reachable over the network without a login · Unknown: No advisory context yet
- Reach?/20Unknown. No tracked technology or package matched
- Severity5.3/10CVSS 5.3
- No patch5/5No patch listed yet
What would change the score
- Would score about 72 if added to CISA KEV
- Would score about 67 if CISA's SSVC rates exploitation active
- Would score about 32 if advisories confirm default setups are exposed
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-2026-126614 (Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts 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-2026-126614 (entry last updated 2026-11-11): Affected: - Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer: from 6.3.3, through 6.3.7 Fixed versions: none listed yet. Setup: unknown whether the bug needs a non-default feature or setting. Check the advisory. CISA KEV: CVE-2026-126614 is not listed as of cve.now's last read. This KEV status is for CVE-2026-126614 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/105 - https://gitlab.com/hmailserver/hmailserver/-/releases/v6.3.8 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-2026-126614 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-2026-126614.
Timeline
- CVE published
- First seen by cve.now
Affected versions
- Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer
From 6.3.3 · through 6.3.7
Evidence 4
CVE record · 2
Establishes: The identifier and description.
- Record
- Record
Corrections
None so far.
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Questions about CVE-2026-126614
Is CVE-2026-126614 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-2026-126614?
hMailServer: from 6.3.3 through 6.3.7.Source: cve.now feed data