Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
Mutt and NeoMutt may treat a signed email as trustworthy while an important threading header, In-Reply-To, is not covered by the signature. An attacker could reuse a signed, unencrypted message in a different reply context to appear as the original sender. Business impact is mainly trust and integrity risk in email-driven decisions.
Executive priority
Treat as a targeted integrity risk, not an emergency outage issue. Prioritize if signed email is used for approvals, legal, finance, engineering releases, or executive communications. Patch through normal vendor channels once available.
Technical view
CVE-2024-49394 is a CWE-347 cryptographic verification weakness. The In-Reply-To header is not protected by signing in mutt/neomutt, enabling replay or contextual misuse of a signed unencrypted message. CVSS 3.1 is 5.3, with network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges, and low integrity impact.
Likely exposure
Environments using mutt or NeoMutt for signed email handling are most relevant. Red Hat lists RHEL 8 and RHEL 9 mutt as affected, RHEL 7 as unknown. The source bundle does not provide exact affected version ranges.
Exploitation context
The bundle does not show CISA KEV listing or confirmed active exploitation. The likely abuse case is social or process manipulation: making a legitimate signed message appear related to a different email thread or decision context.
Researcher notes
Evidence is incomplete on exact vulnerable versions and final fixed releases in the provided bundle. Upstream NeoMutt issue and pull-request links indicate active project handling, but remediation details should be verified directly from those sources and vendor advisories.
Mitigation direction
- Check Red Hat and upstream NeoMutt guidance for fixed packages or configuration advice.
- Prioritize review of RHEL 8 and RHEL 9 systems with mutt installed.
- Update mutt/neomutt when vendor-supported fixes are available.
- Do not rely on thread context alone to validate signed email intent.
- Educate sensitive workflow owners about signed-message replay context risk.
Validation and detection
- Inventory systems with mutt or NeoMutt installed.
- Compare installed packages against vendor advisories for CVE-2024-49394.
- Confirm RHEL 8 and RHEL 9 exposure where mutt is present.
- Track the linked Red Hat Bugzilla and NeoMutt GitHub issue or pull requests.
- Review processes where signed emails authorize payments, approvals, or account changes.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-347: Exact CWE lookup
Use the exact CWE identifier as the starting point before reviewing related ATT&CK behavior. Open the exact CWE lookup page first, then review the ATT&CK searches from that MITRE weakness context. This is a Glexia lookup hint, not an official ATT&CK mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2024-49394 mapping review
Open the CVE-to-ATT&CK bridge for reviewed, inferred, or future official mappings tied to this CVE.
Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 5.3 (3.1)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
SSVC decision data
CVSS vector scores
1 official scoreWe collect every scored CVSS vector available in the official CNA and ADP containers. When more than one version is present, the table keeps the source vectors side by side instead of collapsing them into the highest score.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N3.91.4redhatVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 3.1 score
5.3MediumVector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
Vulnerability timeline
Timeline events are normalized from CVE metadata, CNA source timelines, ADP timelines, and KEV metadata when present.
- CVE reservedCVE Program
The CVE ID was reserved by the assigning CNA.
- Source timelineredhat
Reported to Red Hat.
- Source timelineredhat
Made public.
- CVE publishedCVE Program
The CVE record was published.
- CVE updatedCVE Program
The CVE record metadata indicates this as the latest update time.
ADP provider summaries
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2024-49394CVE reference, redhat · vdb-entry, x_refsource_REDHAT
- RHBZ#2325330CVE reference, redhat · issue-tracking, x_refsource_REDHAT
- https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/issues/4226CVE reference, redhat
- https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/pull/4221CVE reference, redhat
- https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/pull/4227CVE reference, redhat
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.
Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature
Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.