CVE-2025-62176

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. In Mastodon before 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27, the streaming server accepts serving events for public timelines to clients using any valid authentication token, even if those tokens lack the read:statuses scope. This allows OAuth clients without the read scope to subscribe to public channels and receive public timeline events. The impact is limited, as this only affects new public posts published on the public timelines and requires an otherwise valid token, but this may lead to unexpected access to public posts in a limited-federation setting. This issue has been patched in versions 4.4.6, 4.3.14, and 4.2.27. No known workarounds exist.

Weakness

The product does not handle or incorrectly handles when it has insufficient privileges to access resources or functionality as specified by their permissions. This may cause it to follow unexpected code paths that may leave the product in an invalid state.

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/7e98fa9b476fdaed235519f1d527eb956004ba0c
• https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/security/advisories/GHSA-7gwh-mw97-qjgp