Resource exhaustion in Mastodon

CVE-2026-72914

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub. Prior to 4.4.21, 4.5.14, 4.6.4, and 4.7.0-beta.1, the administrative statistics endpoints handled by Api::V1::Admin::MeasuresController and Api::V1::Admin::RetentionController checked authorization only after beginning expensive calculations. Anonymous callers could submit keys, start_at, and end_at parameters that caused long-running SQL queries in Admin::Metrics::Measure, Admin::Metrics::Retention, and Admin::Metrics::Dimension::BaseDimension, allowing repeated requests to exhaust server resources. This issue is fixed in versions 4.4.21, 4.5.14, 4.6.4, and 4.7.0-beta.1.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.008 (55.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 56th percentile — 55.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-72914: held from 0.005 to 0.008.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.008 · change: +0.004

Affected products

  • Mastodon — versions < 4.4.21, >= 4.5.0-beta.1, < 4.5.14, >= 4.6.0-beta.1, < 4.6.4

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-72914?
CVE-2026-72914 is a high-severity vulnerability in Mastodon, classified under Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification). CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-08-10.
How severe is CVE-2026-72914?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.