CVE-2020-26257

Denial of service attack via incorrect parameters to federation APIs

MEDIUM
6.5
CVSS Score
Published: December 9, 2020 at 06:25 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 03:07 AM UTC
3 products affected across 3 vendorsFedoraSynapseSynapse

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Severity
MEDIUM6.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 2%

Description

Matrix is an ecosystem for open federated Instant Messaging and VoIP. Synapse is a reference "homeserver" implementation of Matrix. A malicious or poorly-implemented homeserver can inject malformed events into a room by specifying a different room id in the path of a `/send_join`, `/send_leave`, `/invite` or `/exchange_third_party_invite` request. This can lead to a denial of service in which future events will not be correctly sent to other servers over federation. This affects any server which accepts federation requests from untrusted servers. The Matrix Synapse reference implementation before version 1.23.1 the implementation is vulnerable to this injection attack. Issue is fixed in version 1.23.1. As a workaround homeserver administrators could limit access to the federation API to trusted servers (for example via `federation_domain_whitelist`).

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 1.23.1
Affected range stops below 1.23.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
v < 1.23.1
Affected range stops below 1.23.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

CVSS

6.5MEDIUMGitHub_M
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-79CWE-400

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