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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2026-54738 json

Lemmy: Rate limit bypass via X-Forwarded-For header spoofing in actix-web ConnectionInfo

published 5mo ago modified 2mo ago also EUVD-2026-62850 , GHSA-2hrg-7x4g-9vpg

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository LemmyNet/lemmy. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.6%
EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 47%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Lemmy is a link aggregator and forum for the fediverse. Prior to 0.19.19 and 1.0.0-beta.1, actix-web ConnectionInfo::realip_remote_addr reads the first value of X-Forwarded-For as the client address used by raw_ip_key in crates/utils/src/rate_limit/mod.rs. Lemmy's bundled docker/nginx.conf uses $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for instead of $remote_addr, which appends the real client address to an X-Forwarded-For value supplied by the client. An unauthenticated attacker can therefore place a different spoofed address first on each request and receive a new rate-limit bucket, bypassing limits on POST /api/v4/account/auth/register, POST /api/v4/account/auth/login, POST /api/v4/post, POST /api/v4/comment, GET /api/v4/search, POST /api/v4/image, and POST /api/v4/account/import_settings. This permits excessive account creation, brute-force attempts, spam, scraping, uploads, and repeated imports. This issue is fixed in versions 0.19.19 and 1.0.0-beta.1.

Patch / fix

  • join-lemmy lemmy 0.19.19, 1.0.0-beta.1

Is CVE-2026-54738 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.56% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 47% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L

Affected products

  • LemmyNet lemmy

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-799 Improper Control of Interaction Frequency

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of LemmyNet/lemmy published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.