CVE-2023-49097: ZITADEL vulnerable account takeover via malicious host header injection

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2023-11-30 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-640

Description

ZITADEL is an identity infrastructure system. ZITADEL uses the notification triggering requests Forwarded or X-Forwarded-Host header to build the button link sent in emails for confirming a password reset with the emailed code. If this header is overwritten and a user clicks the link to a malicious site in the email, the secret code can be retrieved and used to reset the users password and take over his account. Accounts with MFA or Passwordless enabled can not be taken over by this attack. This issue has been patched in versions 2.41.6, 2.40.10 and 2.39.9.

Affected products

zitadel: from 2.39.0 before 2.39.9; from 2.40.0 before 2.40.10; from 2.41.0 before 2.41.6 — fixed in 2.39.9, 2.40.10, 2.41.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: zitadel 2.39.9, 2.40.10, 2.41.6. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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