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
hMailServer from Progressive Robot Ltd can be made to stop banning an address after repeated failed logons, which lets a remote attacker, without logging in, keep guessing account passwords from that one address. It is reached by sending SASL PLAIN logons whose user name includes a character outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, on a server using a MySQL or MariaDB database.
Written by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 from the sources below. Verify against them.
Read the original description
The auto-ban of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.2.0 through 6.3.3, with a MySQL or MariaDB database, can be kept from banning an address after repeated failed logons, which allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to go on guessing account passwords from a single address without being banned. The server makes its MySQL tables in MySQL's utf8 character set, which holds no character outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, sends its statements as UTF-8 over a utf8mb4 connection and leaves the database's default strict mode in place. From 6.2.0 it decodes the user name of a SASL PLAIN logon as UTF-8, so the name can hold such a character. When the failed logons counted from one address reach MaxInvalidLogonAttempts (3 by default), the server clears that address's count, saves an IP range named "Auto-ban: " followed by the user name of the logon that reached the limit, and drops the connection. If such a character is in the part of the user name that the range's name keeps (the name is cut to 100 characters), the database refuses the range: no range is saved, the address is not refused, and, its count having already been cleared, it is given the next full set of attempts. An attacker can in this way spend all but the last attempt of each set on password guesses, and make the last under such a name. On Windows, POP3 AUTH PLAIN reaches it on a server as installed, and IMAP AUTHENTICATE PLAIN where IMAP SASL authentication is turned on (off by default); on Windows and on Linux (from 6.3.0), SMTP AUTH PLAIN reaches it where plain-text authentication is allowed (off by default), and ManageSieve and CardDAV where they are turned on (off by default). Each failed save is reported in the server's error log. A database whose strict mode has been turned off stores the character as a question mark and makes the first such ban, but refuses every later ban named after the same user name, or after one holding other such characters in their place, as a duplicate while the first stands, since the server cannot look up a name holding such a character 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-2026-126616 (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-2026-126616 (entry last updated 2026-11-11): Affected: - Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer: from 6.2.0, through 6.3.3 Fixed versions: none listed yet. Setup: unknown whether the bug needs a non-default feature or setting. Check the advisory. CISA KEV: CVE-2026-126616 is not listed as of cve.now's last read. This KEV status is for CVE-2026-126616 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/103 - https://gitlab.com/hmailserver/hmailserver/-/releases/v6.3.4 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-2026-126616 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-2026-126616.
Timeline
- CVE published
- First seen by cve.now
Affected versions
- Progressive Robot Ltd hMailServer
From 6.2.0 · through 6.3.3
Evidence 4
CVE record · 2
Establishes: The identifier and description.
- Record
- Record
Corrections
None so far.
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Questions about CVE-2026-126616
Is CVE-2026-126616 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-2026-126616?
hMailServer: from 6.2.0 through 6.3.3.Source: cve.now feed data