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High · 7.5 CVE-2026-58593 EUVD-2026-41131GHSA-8m27-grg5-27vj

NodeBB - ActivityPub Author Spoofing via Unvalidated attributedTo Mapped to Local User

Published Jul 1, 2026 · Updated Jul 7, 2026 · Assigned by VulnCheck

Description

NodeBB does not bind the claimed author of an inbound ActivityPub object to the authenticated remote actor. The inbound middleware verifies the HTTP-signature actor and checks the origin of object.id, but never validates that attributedTo corresponds to the sender. In the object mock, attributedTo is used directly as a uid, and actors.assert silently ignores numeric identifiers (filtering them out without re-deriving the uid), so a federated remote actor can set attributedTo to a bare numeric value such as 1 and have the resulting post or private message created with that local uid as author, including the administrator account. This lets a remote attacker forge posts and direct messages attributed to arbitrary local users. Requires the ActivityPub/federation feature to be enabled.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
NodeBB NodeBB 4.13.2 —

References