Authentication Bypass by Alternate Name 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
hMailServer from Progressive Robot Ltd has an authentication bypass that lets a remote attacker, without logging in, keep guessing an account's password past the lockout threshold by signing in under an alternate spelling of the account name. Anyone who already knows the password of an account held for review can also sign in to it using an alternate spelling of the name.
Written by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 from the sources below. Verify against them.
Read the original description
The sign-in of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.2.22-pre2 through 6.3.7 takes for an account names that are not its address but under which the database's own comparison finds it, while the per-name lockout and the compromised-account hold are kept by the name as the client gave it. This allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to go on guessing an account's password beyond the lockout's threshold, and anyone who has the password of an account held for review to sign in to it. The per-name lockout (from 6.2.22-pre2; AccountLockoutThreshold in hMailServer.ini, 0, off, by default) locks a name after repeated failed sign-ins. The hold (from 6.3.4, where the compromised-account detection is set to enforce, which is not the default) refuses an account judged to have been taken over. Both are asked, before the password, of the name the client gave: trimmed, in lower case and with a domain alias or the default domain applied. The account whose password the sign-in then checks is whichever one the database finds under that name. The databases find an account under spellings that this key counts apart. MySQL and MariaDB find it under one with accented letters in place of plain ones, and MariaDB 11.8, in a database made before 6.3.4, also under one with full-width letters, with a single letter in place of a pair of plain ones, or with characters its comparison ignores in any number. SQL Server and SQL Server Compact find it under one with full-width letters or with characters their comparison ignores in any number, and SQL Server also under one with a single letter in place of a pair of plain ones, with a character of Latin-1 in place of a digit and, for an address holding letters of Latin-1 outside ASCII, under those letters in the other case, and, under an accent-insensitive collation, with accented letters. PostgreSQL finds it under one holding a letter whose lower case under the database's locale is a plain letter, and, for an address holding letters outside ASCII, under those letters in the other case; on the build for musl (from 6.3.6) the server's own lower case folds nearly all of these too. On every database, a domain alias saved with white space at the end of its name gives such a spelling too, and on every database but PostgreSQL so does an account's bare local part where the default domain was saved with spaces at its end and no other white space (neither is the default). Each such spelling has a lockout threshold of its own, so the lockout limits the guesses at an account only to its threshold times the number of the account's spellings. That is far beyond any threshold for most addresses on MySQL and MariaDB, and without limit on SQL Server, on SQL Server Compact, the database the Windows installer uses by default, and before 6.3.4 on MariaDB 11.8. A locked name is got round under another spelling. A held account is signed in to under another spelling with its password over IMAP, POP3 and SMTP AUTH, and, where they are turned on (off by default), over ManageSieve, the REST API and the webmail. IMAP LOGIN, offered as installed, carries such spellings on MySQL, MariaDB and SQL Server Compact, and, on SQL Server and PostgreSQL, for some addresses; the sign-ins that carry a name as UTF-8 carry them for the others on SQL Server, and on PostgreSQL for those holding one of the plain letters another letter lowers to or a letter outside ASCII with another case. The same lookup mapped to accounts the names given by an OAuth 2.0 token, a client certificate, a Kerberos ticket and an OpenID Connect or SAML identity provider, where those are set up (none is by default), so that a name an issuer gave to one party could sign in to another's account; OAuth 2.0 tokens were mapped so from 6.2.0, before the per-name lockout existed. A name holding a NUL character, carried from 6.3.0 on Linux and 6.3.3 on Windows, failed the statement on MySQL, MariaDB and PostgreSQL.
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
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Check whether my systems are affected by CVE-2026-126615 (Authentication Bypass by Alternate Name 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-2026-126615 (entry last updated 2026-11-11): Affected: - Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer: from 6.2.22-pre2, 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-2026-126615 is not listed as of cve.now's last read. This KEV status is for CVE-2026-126615 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/104 - 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-2026-126615 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-2026-126615.
Timeline
- CVE published
- First seen by cve.now
Affected versions
- Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer
From 6.2.22-pre2 · 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-2026-126615
Is CVE-2026-126615 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-2026-126615?
hMailServer: from 6.2.22-pre2 through 6.3.7.Source: cve.now feed data