Bug 2469230 (CVE-2026-43969)

Summary: CVE-2026-43969 cowlib: cowlib: HTTP request splitting and cookie smuggling due to CRLF Injection.
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
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Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in cowlib, a library used for handling HTTP cookies. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by injecting special characters, such as carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF), into cookie names or values due to improper input validation. This allows for HTTP request splitting, enabling the attacker to append arbitrary headers or smuggle a complete second request against a shared upstream proxy.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-05-11 19:01:24 UTC
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.