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CVE-2026-54740

Lemmy: Lower-ranked federated moderator can remove higher-ranked moderators

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
Fix
Fixed in 0.19.19, 1.0.0-alpha.18
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: poc
  • Automatable: no
  • Technical impact: partial

Summary

Lemmy is a link aggregator and forum for the fediverse. Prior to 0.19.19 and 1.0.0-alpha.18, a lower-ranked remote moderator can remove a higher-ranked moderator by sending a signed ActivityPub Remove activity to the target instance. The local API uses LocalUser::is_higher_mod_or_admin_check to enforce moderator rank, but CollectionRemove::verify in crates/apub/activities/src/community/collection_remove.rs only calls verify_mod_action. CollectionRemove::receive dereferences self.object as an ApubPerson, creates a CommunityModeratorForm, and calls CommunityActions::leave without checking that the actor outranks the moderator identified by the object field. In communities with federated moderators, a junior moderator can therefore strip senior moderators from the community moderator list even though the local API rejects the same action. This issue is fixed in versions 0.19.19 and 1.0.0-alpha.18.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

  3. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • LemmyNet lemmy

    fixed in 0.19.19; From 1.0.0-alpha.0 · fixed in 1.0.0-alpha.18

References 8

GitHub · LemmyNet/lemmy

join-lemmy.org