CVE-2026-43969Cookie Request Header Injection via Unvalidated Encoder in cow_cookie:cookie/1

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 before 2.21.0.

CVSS

2.1 LOW (v4.0, CNA)CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N

Weakness (CWE)

CWE-93

Known exploited

Not in CISA's KEV catalog

EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days)

Not loaded for this CVE

Assigned by

EEF

NVD analysis

Modified

Record last updated

Oct 9, 2026

First seen by InfoSec Signals

Oct 9, 2026

The CVE record on cve.org · NVD's entry

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