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 before 2.21.0.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| ninenines | cowlib | 2.9.0 – < 2.21.0 | 2.21.0 |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Azure Linux
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azure Linux 3 | rabbitmq-server | 3.13.7-10 | — |
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hex | cowlib | >= 2.9.0, < 2.21.0 | 2.21.0 | EEF-CVE-2026-43969 |
| Hex | cowlib | >= 2.9.0, <= 2.16.1 | — | GHSA-g2wm-735q-3f56 |
References
- GitHub Advisory patch
- EEF CNA record for CVE-2026-43969 related third-party-advisory
- OSV record EEF-CVE-2026-43969 related
- Introducing commit f017f8a in ninenines/cowlib related
- Fix commit c17fd73 in ninenines/cowlib patch