CVE-2026-107121
Description
A flaw was found in the SMTP email configuration handling of the keycloak-services component. When the STARTTLS option is enabled, Keycloak fails to strictly enforce an encrypted connection, allowing it to fall back to unencrypted communication if the encryption request is tampered with. An attacker who can intercept network traffic can exploit this to capture sensitive email credentials and message content in plain text.
Statement
The Red Hat Product Security team has assessed the severity of this vulnerability as Moderate, given that exploitation requires an active Man-in-the-Middle network position. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to capture SMTP credentials and email message bodies in plaintext. The vulnerability's root cause is the failure to enforce mandatory TLS when the STARTTLS configuration is enabled, allowing a silent fallback to unencrypted communication.
Mitigation
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 6.5 | N/A | 6.5 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | High | N/A | High |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | None |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | High |
| Integrity Impact | Low | N/A | Low |
| Availability Impact | None | N/A | None |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Application Data; Modify Files or Directories
Anyone can read the information by gaining access to the channel being used for communication. Many communication channels can be "sniffed" (monitored) by adversaries during data transmission. For example, in networking, packets can traverse many intermediary nodes from the source to the destination, whether across the internet, an internal network, the cloud, etc. Some actors might have privileged access to a network interface or any link along the channel, such as a router, but they might not be authorized to collect the underlying data. As a result, network traffic could be sniffed by adversaries, spilling security-critical data.
Integrity,Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Application Data; Modify Files or Directories; Other
When full communications are recorded or logged, such as with a packet dump, an adversary could attempt to obtain the dump long after the transmission has occurred and try to "sniff" the cleartext from the recorded communications in the dump itself. Even if the information is encoded in a way that is not human-readable, certain techniques could determine which encoding is being used, then decode the information.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Paul Bottinelli of Trail of Bits in collaboration with OpenAI for reporting this issue.
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