What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2023-41335: Temporary storage of plaintext passwords during password changes in matrix synapse
- Severity: low (CVSS 3.7 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2023-09-27 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-312
Description
Synapse is an open-source Matrix homeserver written and maintained by the Matrix.org Foundation. When users update their passwords, the new credentials may be briefly held in the server database. While this doesn't grant the server any added capabilities—it already learns the users' passwords as part of the authentication process—it does disrupt the expectation that passwords won't be stored in the database. As a result, these passwords could inadvertently be captured in database backups for a longer duration. These temporarily stored passwords are automatically erased after a 48-hour window. This issue has been addressed in version 1.93.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
Affected products
- Fedoraproject Fedora: 37, 38
- matrix-org synapse: from 1.66.0 before 1.93.0 — fixed in 1.93.0
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: matrix-org synapse 1.93.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/16272
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/security/advisories/GHSA-4f74-84v3-j9q5
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/2AFB2Y3S2VCPCN5P2XCZTG24MBMZ7DM4/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/65QPC55I4D27HIZP7H2NQ34EOXHPP4AO/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/N6P4QULVUE254WI7XF2LWWOGHCYVFXFY/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202401-12
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/16272
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/security/advisories/GHSA-4f74-84v3-j9q5
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/2AFB2Y3S2VCPCN5P2XCZTG24MBMZ7DM4/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/65QPC55I4D27HIZP7H2NQ34EOXHPP4AO/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/N6P4QULVUE254WI7XF2LWWOGHCYVFXFY/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202401-12
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