Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
Penpot versions before 2.14.5 have a critical account-takeover flaw. A registered user could abuse team-invitation and registration-profile handling to gain a session for another non-blocked profile without that profile’s password. This can expose design assets, collaboration data, and administrative trust boundaries.
Executive priority
Treat this as an urgent remediation item. The vulnerability can undermine account ownership and confidentiality across Penpot workspaces, and the fix is identified as version 2.14.5. Absence from KEV lowers evidence of active exploitation, not business impact.
Technical view
The issue combines exposed team invitation tokens, prepare-register-profile embedding an existing profile id, and register-profile issuing a session when invitation email matching succeeds without password verification. The CVE maps to CWE-287 and CWE-639, with CVSS 9.9 and network, low-complexity, low-privilege characteristics.
Likely exposure
Organizations running Penpot versions earlier than 2.14.5 are affected. Exposure is most urgent for network-accessible Penpot deployments with active user registration or team-invitation workflows. The source bundle does not identify affected hosted services beyond the Penpot product versions listed.
Exploitation context
The source bundle does not state active exploitation, and KEV is false. The described impact is severe because an authenticated registered user could take over any non-blocked profile without user interaction, but no exploit code or observed attacks are cited in the provided sources.
Researcher notes
Focus validation on the invitation-token, prepare-register-profile, and register-profile flow described by the advisory. The provided evidence supports account takeover of non-blocked profiles by a registered user; it does not support unauthenticated remote exploitation or active exploitation claims.
Mitigation direction
- Upgrade Penpot to version 2.14.5 or later.
- Prioritize internet-accessible or multi-tenant Penpot deployments first.
- Review the Penpot advisory, pull request, commit, and 2.14.5 release notes.
- If upgrade is delayed, check vendor guidance before applying compensating controls.
- Review accounts and sessions after remediation for suspicious takeover indicators.
Validation and detection
- Inventory all Penpot deployments and record their running versions.
- Confirm no deployment runs a Penpot version earlier than 2.14.5.
- Verify the 2.14.5 fix is present from package, image, or release metadata.
- Review authentication, invitation, and session logs for unusual profile access.
- Confirm blocked profiles and sensitive accounts were not unexpectedly accessed.
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-287: Credential and account abuse lookup
Authentication and credential weaknesses can make valid-account abuse and credential telemetry useful review starting points. 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 lookupCWE-639: 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 lookupCredential and access behavior lookup
The CVE wording references authentication or credential exposure, so valid-account and credential-access review may help. This is a Glexia inferred lookup path, not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, or CVE Program mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2026-44986 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
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.9 (3.1)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
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:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H3.16GitHub_MVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 3.1 score
9.9CriticalVector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
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.
- 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://github.com/penpot/penpot/security/advisories/GHSA-4937-35vc-hqjjCVE reference, GitHub_M · x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/penpot/penpot/pull/9380CVE reference, GitHub_M · x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/penpot/penpot/commit/9e681260ccc4feb6c564ff0773fb9594b462c574CVE reference, GitHub_M · x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/penpot/penpot/releases/tag/2.14.5CVE reference, GitHub_M · x_refsource_MISC
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 Authentication
Improper Authentication represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key
Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.