CVE-2025-62175

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In versions before 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27, disabling or suspending a user account does not disconnect the account from the streaming API. This allows disabled or suspended accounts to continue receiving real-time updates through existing streaming connections and to establish new streaming connections, even though they cannot interact with other API endpoints. This undermines moderation actions, as administrators expect disabled or suspended accounts to be fully disconnected from the service. This issue has been patched in versions 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27. No known workarounds exist.

Weakness

The product attempts to drop privileges but does not check or incorrectly checks to see if the drop succeeded.

Potential Mitigations

• Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
• Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References

• https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/commit/2971ac9863b91372e68ac152caf6f4dbff511d17
• https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/security/advisories/GHSA-r2fh-jr9c-9pxh