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CVSS estimates technical severity, but it does not automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, asset criticality, known exploitation, and whether compensating controls exist. A Medium CVSS on an exposed production system can be more urgent than a Critical on an isolated non-production host.

Vulnerability Database

Q: What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

Q: What's the difference between a vulnerability, an exploit, and a zero-day?

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. Risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Q: Why do vulnerabilities keep reappearing in our environment?

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete asset discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host.

Q: How do we prioritize remediation without burning out the team?

Use a repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress so remediation is steady, not reactive.

Q: How can SynScan help reduce vulnerability risk over time?

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363,156

Total vulnerabilities in the database

Auth.js: Email normalizer validates the address before Unicode normalization, allowing a homoglyph @ bypass — @auth / core

Incorrect Behavior Order: Validate Before Canonicalize

Summary

The default email-address normalizer used by the email/magic-link sign-in flow validates the address before applying Unicode normalization. An address can contain a Unicode character that is not an ASCII @ (U+0040) but canonicalizes to one under NFKC/NFKD normalization (the normalization commonly applied by mail libraries and services for internationalized email). Such an address passes the normalizer's single-@ check, but a downstream mail library that normalizes the string then sees two @ separators and may deliver the passwordless sign-in link to a different recipient than intended. This is an instance of validating before canonicalizing.

Am I affected?

You may be affected if all of the following hold:

You use next-auth >= 4.0.0, < 4.24.14, or @auth/core >= 0.1.0, < 0.41.3.
You have the email / magic-link (passwordless) provider enabled.
You rely on the built-in default identifier normalizer (you have not supplied your own normalizeIdentifier).
Your sendVerificationRequest implementation uses a mail library or delivery service that applies Unicode normalization to recipient addresses (most internationalized-email/SMTPUTF8-capable senders do).

You are not affected if you do not use the email provider, or if your normalizer/mailer rejects or canonicalizes non-ASCII addresses before they are validated.

Impact

Account takeover: an attacker who knows a victim's email address can request a magic link that is delivered to an attacker-controlled mailbox, then use it to sign in as the victim.
No victim interaction is required to misroute the link; the attacker initiates the flow.

Patched version

The fix applies Unicode (NFKC) normalization before the address is validated, so homoglyph separators are collapsed and rejected up front. Upgrade to the first release containing this fix (pending; this advisory will be updated with the exact patched version before publication). No application code changes are required after upgrading.

Workarounds

If you cannot upgrade immediately:

Supply a custom normalizeIdentifier on the email provider that calls identifier.normalize("NFKC") (and lower-cases/trims) before any validation, and rejects addresses that do not contain exactly one @ after normalization.
Or reject any address whose local part or domain contains non-ASCII characters, if your user base does not require internationalized email addresses.

Credit

Reported by @kakashi-kx. Thank you for the responsible disclosure.

Published: Jul 23, 2026
Updated: Jul 24, 2026
GHSA: GHSA-7rqj-j65f-68wh
Severity: Critical
Exploit:
CISA KEV:

No technical information available.

CWEs:

CWE-180

Affected Software
References

Software	From	Fixed in
@auth / core	0.1.0	0.41.3
next-auth	4.10.3	4.24.15
next-auth	5.0.0-beta.1	5.0.0-beta.32

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.