CVE-2026-23829 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-93 vulnerability in github.com/axllent/mailpit. A fix is available for github.com/axllent/mailpit — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Mailpit has SMTP Header Injection via Regex Bypass
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-23829.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-23829 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/axllent/mailpitReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Mailpit is an email testing tool and API for developers. Prior to version 1.28.3, Mailpit's SMTP server is vulnerable to Header Injection due to an insufficient Regular Expression used to validate RCPT TO and MAIL FROM addresses. An attacker can inject arbitrary SMTP headers (or corrupt existing ones) by including carriage return characters (\r) in the email address. This header injection occurs because the regex intended to filter control characters fails to exclude \r and \n when used inside a character class. Version 1.28.3 fixes this issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/axllent/mailpit | all versions | 1.28.3go get github.com/axllent/mailpit@v1.28.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/axllent/mailpit, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/axllent/mailpit to 1.28.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-23829 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2026-23829 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-23829. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-23829 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-23829 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.