An attacker that holds a token intended for a different purpose can authenticate, because when an OAuth2 token response does not contain a scope claim, the audience claim is used in its place and checked against the configured required scopes. These are different concepts, and the audience claim does not describe what a token is allowed to do. A token that grants no relevant permissions can be accepted because its intended recipient value happens to match a configured scope name, granting access that should have been denied. It also hides an identity provider misconfiguration where scopes are not being issued at all. Ensure the identity provider issues a scope claim for all tokens used with Dovecot, and that configured scope names do not match audience values. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.
History

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Open-xchange
Open-xchange ox Dovecot Ce
Open-xchange ox Dovecot Pro
Vendors & Products Open-xchange
Open-xchange ox Dovecot Ce
Open-xchange ox Dovecot Pro

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Title OAuth2 Token Misuse Enables Unauthorized Authentication dovecot: Dovecot: Authentication bypass via incorrect OAuth2 token validation
Weaknesses CWE-303
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

threat_severity

Important


Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Title OAuth2 Token Misuse Enables Unauthorized Authentication

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description An attacker that holds a token intended for a different purpose can authenticate, because when an OAuth2 token response does not contain a scope claim, the audience claim is used in its place and checked against the configured required scopes. These are different concepts, and the audience claim does not describe what a token is allowed to do. A token that grants no relevant permissions can be accepted because its intended recipient value happens to match a configured scope name, granting access that should have been denied. It also hides an identity provider misconfiguration where scopes are not being issued at all. Ensure the identity provider issues a scope claim for all tokens used with Dovecot, and that configured scope names do not match audience values. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.
Weaknesses CWE-287
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 7.4, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: OX

Published: 2026-08-28T10:12:32.679Z

Updated: 2026-08-28T15:53:21.257Z

Reserved: 2026-08-11T13:14:10.017Z

Link: CVE-2026-73208

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Deferred

Published: 2026-08-28T12:16:31.127

Modified: 2026-09-03T18:13:44.643

Link: CVE-2026-73208

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Important

Publid Date: 2026-08-28T10:12:32Z

Links: CVE-2026-73208 - Bugzilla