Vulnerability · Published Aug 28, 2026 · Assigned by OX
CVE-2026-40205
Medium 5.9
In plain English
A medium-severity improper authentication in OX Dovecot CE from Open-Xchange GmbH. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 11% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
An attacker that holds an OAuth2 token granting only part of the required scopes can authenticate, because when more than one scope is required in the configuration, the remote token validation paths accept a token that carries only one of them, while the local token validation path correctly requires all of them. The configured authorization policy is not enforced, so a token that was granted only part of the required permissions is accepted where it should have been rejected. Use local token validation where tokens can be validated locally. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine:v3.23 | dovecot | 2.4.5-r0 | ALPINE-CVE-2026-40205 |
| Alpine:v3.24 | dovecot | 2.4.5-r0 | ALPINE-CVE-2026-40205 |
| Debian:12 | dovecot | 1:2.3.19.1+dfsg1-2.1+deb12u7 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-40205 |
| Debian:13 | dovecot | 1:2.4.1+dfsg1-6+deb13u7 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-40205 |
| Debian:14 | dovecot | 1:2.4.5+dfsg1-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-40205 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | dovecot | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-40205 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | dovecot | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-40205 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | dovecot | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-40205 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| Open-Xchange GmbH | OX Dovecot Pro | 2.3.11.2 – before 2.3.22.23.0.0 – before 3.0.73.1.0 – before 3.1.6 |
| Open-Xchange GmbH | OX Dovecot CE | 2.3.11.2 – before 2.4.5 |
Weakness: CWE-287 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N