### Summary
Due to insufficient origin validation in all Mastodon, attackers can impersonate and take over any remote account.
Every Mastodon version prior to 3.5.17 is vulnerable, as well as...
This isn’t possible with Ruby and Mastodon. The only way to distribute the patch is to reveal the changes to the source. FWIW, compiling the fix is still just an obfuscation method, one can still just diff the binaries and see what changed (see: reverse-engineering Windows vulnerabilities in updates).
At best, you can release it with a bunch of unrelated and obfuscating changes, but putting work into doing that is further delaying simply getting the fix released.
Indeed but we’ve observed that compiled binaries still take actors that little bit longer (~24h) before developing exploits which, when you’re trying to buy time for users to patch, is invaluable.
Hopefully we won’t see widespread exploration before patches are applied as I can imagine a lot of instances’ infrastructure isn’t architected and managed with the level of care you see from larger orgs given how many are hobbyist efforts.
Federated services don’t need negative press this early on. It’ll only serve Meta and enterprise-created and controlled services.
This isn’t possible with Ruby and Mastodon. The only way to distribute the patch is to reveal the changes to the source. FWIW, compiling the fix is still just an obfuscation method, one can still just diff the binaries and see what changed (see: reverse-engineering Windows vulnerabilities in updates).
At best, you can release it with a bunch of unrelated and obfuscating changes, but putting work into doing that is further delaying simply getting the fix released.
Indeed but we’ve observed that compiled binaries still take actors that little bit longer (~24h) before developing exploits which, when you’re trying to buy time for users to patch, is invaluable.
Hopefully we won’t see widespread exploration before patches are applied as I can imagine a lot of instances’ infrastructure isn’t architected and managed with the level of care you see from larger orgs given how many are hobbyist efforts.
Federated services don’t need negative press this early on. It’ll only serve Meta and enterprise-created and controlled services.