CRLF header injection in vertx-mail-client allows manipulation of outgoing SMTP messages

CISA KEV is observed exploitation evidence. FIRST EPSS is a dated prediction of exploitation in the next 30 days. Missing scores are unknown. This collector requests predictions only for explicit CVE aliases in the public NuGet archive; Microsoft release views retain their existing prediction scope.

No collected risk observation for these identifiers. This does not establish absence of exploitation or a zero probability.

In Eclipse Vert.x versions [4.0.0, 4.5.34] or [5.0.0,5.0.12] or [5.1.0,5.1.9] or [5.2.0, 5.2.0], the vertx-mail-client does not sanitize CR (\r) or LF (\n) characters in user-supplied email header names and values before writing them into the SMTP DATA section. A CR/LF sequence embedded in a name or value passed to MailMessage.addHeader(), MailMessage.setHeaders(), MailAttachment.addHeader(), or MailAttachment.setHeaders() is written verbatim to the wire, allowing an attacker to inject arbitrary headers (e.g. Bcc, Reply-To, Content-Type) or prepend body content to the outgoing message. The same weakness affects MIME part metadata set via MailAttachment.setContentType(), setDisposition(), setDescription(), and setContentId(), which are written directly into MIME part headers without validation. A secondary weakness in Utils.mustEncode(char) additionally allows a bare LF in a From display-name to bypass Q-encoding and reach the wire unchanged. An unauthenticated attacker who can control any header name, header value, or attachment metadata field passed to the mail client (for example via a web form or API that feeds into MailMessage) can exploit this to redirect email copies, spoof headers, or tamper with message structure. The impacted component is io.vertx:vertx-mail-client.

Source published

14 Oct 2026 18:50:21 UTC

Source modified

14 Oct 2026 19:49:35 UTC

Observed here

23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC

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CVSS 4.0 · 6.9 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N