CVE-2026-43969

Cookie Request Header Injection via Unvalidated Encoder in cow_cookie:cookie/1

LOW
3.2
CVSS Score
Published: May 11, 2026 at 06:06 PM UTC
Updated: October 26, 2026 at 08:10 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorCowlib

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Severity
LOW3.2
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.1%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences ('CRLF Injection') vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows HTTP request splitting and cookie smuggling via unvalidated cookie name and value fields. cow_cookie:cookie/1 in cowlib builds a client-side Cookie: request header from a list of name-value pairs without validating either field. An attacker who controls the cookie names or values passed to this function can inject ;, ,, CR, LF, or TAB characters into the serialized header. This enables two classes of attack: cookie smuggling within a single header (e.g. injecting "; admin=1" to introduce a phantom cookie that the receiving server treats as authentic) and HTTP request header splitting (injecting CRLF to append arbitrary headers or smuggle a complete second request against a shared upstream proxy). The decoder side (parse_cookie_name/1, parse_cookie_value/1) and setcookie/3 already validate and reject these characters; the encoder alone is missing the check. This issue affects cowlib from 2.9.0.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

2.9.0 ≤ v ≤ 2.16.12.9.0f017f8a0ecbffd5033d9ab49bf180186f7a523a7

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
HIGH
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
CHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
LOW
Availability
NONE
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-93

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