pretalx mail templates vulnerable to email injection via unescaped user-controlled placeholders
Date: 2026-04
Affected: pip/pretalx
Attack vector: phishing
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Medium
CVE: CVE-2026-41426
CWE: CWE-116
CWE-79
CVSS: 6.1 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N)

An unauthenticated attacker can send arbitrary HTML-rendered emails from a pretalx instance's configured sender address by embedding malformed HTML or markdown link syntax in a user-controlled template placeholder such as the account display name. The most direct vector is the password-reset flow: the attacker registers an account with a malicious name, enters the victim's email address, and triggers a password reset. The resulting email is delivered from the event's legitimate sender address and passes SPF/DKIM/DMARC validation, making it a ready-made phishing vector. The same class of bug affects every mail template that interpolates a user-controlled placeholder (speaker name, proposal title, biography, question answers, etc.), including organiser-triggered emails such as acceptance/rejection notifications. ### Credits Thanks go to Mark Fijneman for finding and reporting a subset of this issue, which alerted us to the wider vulnerability.


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):