CVE-2025-68667

NVD	https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-68667
CWE	https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/20.html

Conduit is a chat server powered by Matrix. A vulnerability that affects a number of Conduit-derived homeservers allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to force the target server to cryptographically sign arbitrary membership events. Affected products include Conduit prior to version 0.10.10, continuwuity prior to version 0.5.0, Grapevine prior to commit 9a50c244, and tuwunel prior to version 1.4.8. The flaw exists because the server fails to validate the origin of a signing request, provided the events state_key is a valid user ID belonging to the target server. Attackers can forge leave events for any user on the target server. This forcibly removes users (including admins and bots) from rooms. This allows denial of service and/or the removal of technical protections for a room (including policy servers, if all users on the policy server are removed). Attackers can forge invite events from a victim user to themselves, provided they have an account on a server where there is an account that has the power level to send invites. This allows the attacker to join private or invite-only rooms accessible by the victim, exposing confidential conversation history and room state. Attackers can forge ban events from a victim user to any user below the victim users power level, provided the victim has the power level to issue bans AND the target of the ban resides on the same server as the victim. This allows the attacker to ban anyone in a room who is on the same server as the vulnerable one, however cannot exploit this to ban users on other servers or the victim themself. Conduit fixes the issue in version 0.10.10. continuwuity fixes the issue in commits 7fa4fa98 and b2bead67, released in 0.5.0. tuwunel fixes the issue in commit dc9314de1f8a6e040c5aa331fe52efbe62e6a2c3, released in 1.4.8. Grapevine fixes the issue in commit 9a50c2448abba6e2b7d79c64243bb438b351616c. As a workaround, block access to the PUT /_matrix/federation/v2/invite/{roomId}/{eventId} endpoint using your reverse proxy.

Weakness

The product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly.

Extended Description

Input validation is a frequently-used technique for checking potentially dangerous inputs in order to ensure that the inputs are safe for processing within the code, or when communicating with other components. Input can consist of:

Data can be simple or structured. Structured data can be composed of many nested layers, composed of combinations of metadata and raw data, with other simple or structured data. Many properties of raw data or metadata may need to be validated upon entry into the code, such as:

Implied or derived properties of data must often be calculated or inferred by the code itself. Errors in deriving properties may be considered a contributing factor to improper input validation.

Potential Mitigations

Assume all input is malicious. Use an “accept known good” input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, “boat” may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as “red” or “blue.”
Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code’s environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
Even though client-side checks provide minimal benefits with respect to server-side security, they are still useful. First, they can support intrusion detection. If the server receives input that should have been rejected by the client, then it may be an indication of an attack. Second, client-side error-checking can provide helpful feedback to the user about the expectations for valid input. Third, there may be a reduction in server-side processing time for accidental input errors, although this is typically a small savings.
Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application’s current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180, CWE-181). Make sure that your application does not inadvertently decode the same input twice (CWE-174). Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked. Use libraries such as the OWASP ESAPI Canonicalization control.
Consider performing repeated canonicalization until your input does not change any more. This will avoid double-decoding and similar scenarios, but it might inadvertently modify inputs that are allowed to contain properly-encoded dangerous content.

Improper Input Validation

Weakness

Extended Description

Potential Mitigations

References

CVE-2025-68667

Improper Input Validation

Weakness

Extended Description

Potential Mitigations

Related Attack Patterns

References