{"id":207099,"date":"2022-11-24T12:45:33","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T11:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=207099"},"modified":"2025-07-01T20:19:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T03:19:28","slug":"mastodon-security-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/mastodon-security-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch out for these Mastodon security issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mastodon has been getting a lot of attention recently as disenchanted Twitter users flee Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk\u2019s takeover. The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.softonic.com\/articles\/fediverse-social-networks\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Federated open-source social network<\/a> offers a more decentralized version of social media that stands in contrast to the billionaire-owned version that is Twitter. It may sound refreshing and more in tune with ideas of freedom from dominion, but <strong>as Mastodon has been growing in popularity, security experts have been taking to the service to investigate<\/strong> for any particular threats that we should worry about. Here is a quick look at what they have found.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"sc-card-program\">\r\n  <div class=\"sc-card-program__body\">\r\n    <div class=\"sc-card-program__row clearfix\">\r\n      <div class=\"sc-card-program__col-logo\">\r\n        <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"sc-card-program__img\" alt=\"Mastodon\" src=\"https:\/\/images.sftcdn.net\/images\/t_app-logo-xl,f_auto\/p\/5dc8bcfe-6297-4450-a25c-bf2120039473\/130393604\/mastodon-Mastodon-icn.webp\" width=\"100px\" height=\"100px\">\r\n      <\/div>\r\n      <div class=\"sc-card-program__col-title\">\r\n        <span class=\"sc-card-program__title\">Mastodon<\/span>\r\n        <a class=\"sc-card-program__button sc-card-program-internal\" href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Download Now<\/a>\r\n      <\/div>\r\n      <div class=\"sc-card-program__col-rating\">\r\n        <svg class=\"rating-score__content\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" version=\"1.1\" x=\"0\" y=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 50 50\" enable-background=\"new 0 0 50 50\" xml:space=\"preserve\"><path class=\"rating-score__background rating-score--good\" fill=\"none\" stroke-width=\"6\" stroke-miterlimit=\"10\" d=\"M40 40c8.3-8.3 8.3-21.7 0-30s-21.7-8.3-30 0 -8.3 21.7 0 30\"><\/path><path class=\"rating-score__value rating-score__value--0\" fill=\"none\" stroke-width=\"6\" stroke-dashoffset=\"0\" stroke-miterlimit=\"10\" d=\"M40 40c8.3-8.3 8.3-21.7 0-30s-21.7-8.3-30 0 -8.3 21.7 0 30\"><\/path><text class=\"rating-score__number\" content=\"\" text-anchor=\"middle\" transform=\"matrix(1 0 0 1 25 31.0837)\" data-auto=\"app-user-score\"><\/text><\/svg>\r\n      <\/div>\r\n    <\/div>\r\n    <div class=\"sc-card-program__row\">\r\n      <span class=\"sc-card-program__description\"><\/span>\r\n    <\/div>\r\n    <div class=\"sc-card-program__row\">\r\n      <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"sc-card-program__bigpic\" src=\"\" onerror=\"this.style.display='none'\">\r\n    <\/div>\r\n    <a class=\"sc-card-program__link track-link sc-card-program-internal\" href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/a>\r\n  <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A report by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/dr-tech\/cybersecurity-pros-mastodon-flaws-under-microscope\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dark Reading<\/a>, which is a blog covering and run by the cybersecurity community, has brought together a series of vulnerabilities that have been raised by community members. These include an <strong>HTML injection vulnerability<\/strong> and <strong>a system misconfiguration<\/strong> that could potentially open up control to a malicious third party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The HTML injection vulnerability, which has been highlighted by PortSwigger researcher Gareth Heyes <strong>could open up the possibility for infosec passwords to be stolen<\/strong> from Mastodon. The system misconfiguration brought to the attention of the cybersecurity community by Lenin Alevski from MinIO <strong>offers the possibility for a scammer to download, modify, or even delete everything from a particular server<\/strong>. A third vulnerability raised by Anurag Sen offers malicious actors the chance to <strong>scrape user data <\/strong>from a Mastodon server at scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In themselves, these issues do not need to set the alarm bells ringing for new Mastodon users. This is mostly how the cybersecurity community works, highlighting vulnerabilities and issues in a service or site, which the company then sets about trying to fix. <strong>What is interesting here is that the cybersecurity community is starting to pay more attention to Mastodon<\/strong> as more and more users are signing up. The flip of this is that there <strong>will no doubt be a host of scammers out there also trying to take advantage of Mastodon\u2019s new users<\/strong> as they try to familiarize themselves with the tricky interface and not-so-friendly user interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you want to learn more about Mastodon you can read our short <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.en.softonic.com\/articles\/mastodon-1-million-monthly-active-users\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mastodon introduction<\/a> and if you are a disillusioned twitter user you should check out our guide to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.softonic.com\/articles\/mastodon-alternative-to-twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">different Twitter alternatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mastodon has been getting a lot of attention recently as disenchanted Twitter users flee Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk\u2019s takeover. The Federated open-source social network offers a more decentralized version of social media that stands in contrast to the billionaire-owned version that is Twitter. It may sound refreshing and more in tune with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/mastodon-security-issues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Watch out for these Mastodon security issues&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9073,"featured_media":207101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-207099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322873,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207099\/revisions\/322873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207099"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=207099"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=207099"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=207099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}