VULNERABILITY INTELLIGENCE

CVE-2017-15042

CVSS score5.9 MEDIUM
EPSS probability1.28%
CISA KEVNot currently listed
Published2017-10-05
Last modified2026-06-17
CVSS vectorCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Description

An unintended cleartext issue exists in Go before 1.8.4 and 1.9.x before 1.9.1. RFC 4954 requires that, during SMTP, the PLAIN auth scheme must only be used on network connections secured with TLS. The original implementation of smtp.PlainAuth in Go 1.0 enforced this requirement, and it was documented to do so. In 2013, upstream issue #5184, this was changed so that the server may decide whether PLAIN is acceptable. The result is that if you set up a man-in-the-middle SMTP server that doesn't advertise STARTTLS and does advertise that PLAIN auth is OK, the smtp.PlainAuth implementation sends the username and password.

Weakness classification

  • CWE-319: Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information

Primary references