GHSA-G4QM-M288-5CP9
Vulnerability from github – Published: 2026-10-08 17:51 – Updated: 2026-10-08 17:51Summary
Coraza's cookie parser (internal/cookies.ParseCookies) does not strip ASCII control characters (CTLs) from the edges of a cookie name/value before they're matched against REQUEST_COOKIES / REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES. When a CTL sits directly next to the = separator, Coraza absorbs it into the adjacent name or value, while several backend cookie parsers trim it away — so the WAF and the application disagree about the cookie it just received.
Root cause
ParseCookies(internal/cookies/cookies.go:17,26,31) trims vianet/textproto.TrimString, which strips only space (0x20) and tab (0x09).- RFC 6265 §4.1.1 defines cookie
nameas an HTTPtokenandvalueascookie-octet, both excluding the full C0 control range (0x00–0x1F,0x7F) — not just space/tab. - Input
a\v=\t'(vertical tab\vnext to=) keeps\vin the name (a\v), yielding name=a\v, value=\t'.
Confirmed divergence from real backends
| Implementation | Name | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Coraza (< 3.8.0) | a\v |
\t' |
Python http.cookies, and the Werkzeug/Flask version in the report below |
a |
' |
PHP $_COOKIE |
a |
\t' |
Node.js cookie package |
a\v |
' |
RFC 6265 itself calls this exact cookie-pair invalid, so there's no single spec-correct reference — but Coraza's boundary handling diverges from 2 of these 3 widely-used backends.
Correction (2026-10-02): current Werkzeug (3.1.9, checked during review of the 3.8.1 follow-up) keeps a\v as the name, like Node's cookie package. The name divergence therefore applies to PHP and to Python's http.cookies, not to every Werkzeug version.
Impact
An attacker can pad a Cookie header with a CTL adjacent to = so Coraza indexes a different name/value than the backend application does. A SecRule scoped to a specific cookie name or value can then miss the cookie the application actually processes — a WAF bypass for cookie-carried attacks.
Affected component
internal/cookies.ParseCookies, consumed via REQUEST_COOKIES / REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES.
Fix
Trim the full CTL range (not just space/tab) from both ends of the extracted name and value, treating a boundary-adjacent CTL as a delimiter rather than token content — aligning with RFC 6265's token/cookie-octet grammar.
The fix does not attempt to resolve what happens when a CTL lands in the interior of an otherwise-plausible name (e.g. ab\vcd). That case is disputed among the backends themselves — Python's http.cookies rejects the whole pair, PHP strips the CTL from the middle, Node's cookie package keeps it — so there is no consensus to converge on. It is left as a separate follow-up rather than guessed at here.
Implementation note
The trim is deliberately hand-rolled (a byte-wise scan on b <= ' ' || b == 0x7f, which covers octets 0x00–0x20 plus 0x7F) rather than delegated to the standard library. This is a conscious choice on a security hot path and should not be "simplified" away later:
strings.TrimFuncwas measured and rejected. It invokes its predicate through a func value once per byte scanned, which Go cannot devirtualize throughstrings.indexFunc. On an Apple M2, parsing a 64 KiB CTL-saturatedCookieheader costs 167.6 µs viaTrimFuncversus 33.9 µs byte-wise — a ~5× CPU amplification handed to an attacker, on input that is attacker-controlled and parsed on every request. Allocation counts are identical either way; the cost is purely the per-byte indirect call.strings.TrimSpaceis not a substitute. It misses most of the CTL range (0x00–0x08,0x0E–0x1F,0x7F) and additionally trimsU+0085andU+00A0, whose multi-byte UTF-8 encodings a backend would not strip — reintroducing the very parser-disagreement class this advisory closes.
The byte-wise implementation was verified equivalent to a TrimFunc-based one across all 16,843,009 byte strings of length 0–3, including invalid UTF-8, with zero mismatches. BenchmarkParseCookies/CTLFlood guards the hot path against a future regression to a per-byte indirect call.
Proof of Concept (original report)
Hi, @fzipi, i hope you doing well, i'm RelunSec from InsiteTech.jp
we discovered a parser confusion in cookie parser, i used a simple flask app that print the cookies
```py from flask import Flask, request
app = Flask(name)
@app.route('/') def index(): # 1. Print all cookies as a dictionary to your terminal console print("All cookies:", request.cookies)
return "Cookies logged in terminal!"if name == 'main': app.run(debug=True) ```
and a go setup
```go package cookies
import ( "fmt" "testing" )
func TestParseCookie(t *testing.T) { inputs := []string{ "a\v=\t'", }
fmt.Println("\n==========================================") fmt.Println(" COOKIE PARSE DIRECT LOCAL RUN ") fmt.Println("==========================================")
for _, input := range inputs { // Calling the exact lowercase function name from the repo cookies := ParseCookies(input)
fmt.Printf("-> Input: %q\n", input) fmt.Printf(" Output: %q\n", cookies) fmt.Println("------------------------------------------")} fmt.Println("==========================================") } ```
i runned the go program as you can see
```go relunsec@relunsec:~/software/coraza/internal/cookies$ go test
========================================== COOKIE PARSE DIRECT LOCAL RUN ========================================== -> Input: "a\v=\t'" Output: map["a\v":["\t'"]]
========================================== PASS ok github.com/corazawaf/coraza/v3/internal/cookies 0.003s ```
and then i sended a curl request to the python flask web app
bash relunsec@relunsec:~/software/coraza/internal/cookies$ curl 127.0.0.1:5000 -H $'Cookie: a\v=\t' Cookies logged in terminal!and then i saw in the running flask app terminal
python All cookies: ImmutableMultiDict([('a', "'")])as you can see python see that as the a cookie and the value of it is
', while coraza see it in a different name and a valuean attacker can craft a crafted payload that evade cookie inspection and then perfom their attack
Patched in 3.8.1
The 3.8.0 fix was incomplete. 3.8.1 completes it: trimming control characters in 3.8.0 turned a cookie whose name is only control characters (\x01=payload) into a cookie with an empty name, and empty names have always been skipped, so its value was no longer inspected. Node's cookie package ({"\x01": "payload"}, {"": "payload"}) and Werkzeug still pass such pairs to the application. 3.8.1 keeps them in REQUEST_COOKIES under the name "". This is an intentional deviation from ModSecurity v2 and v3, which skip empty names. Upgrade to 3.8.1; 3.8.0 is listed as affected.
Severity (revised 2026-10-02)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N (4.0, Medium).
Unchanged vector; precondition stated per the project's triage guidance. Attack Complexity is High because the bypass depends on a specific backend cookie parser: the original trim discrepancy affects backends that split a\v as a (PHP's $_COOKIE, Python's http.cookies) and only rules keyed on a cookie name, and the 3.8.0 regression affects backends that pass empty or control-character-only cookie names to the application (Node's cookie package, Werkzeug for \x01).
Impact metrics follow the convention used across Coraza's WAF-bypass advisories: the vulnerable component is Coraza, but the impact lands on the protected application, so Scope is Changed. The bypass hides a payload from inspection; the application still has to be vulnerable to it, so Integrity is Low and Confidentiality is not scored separately.
AI involvement in this section: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic), via Claude Code, re-derived the CVSS vector from the project's triage guidance (AGENTS.md, "CVSS preconditions get verified, not copied from the report") and drafted this text. A human maintainer (fzipi) chose the S:C/I:L impact convention and directed this update.
{
"affected": [
{
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Go",
"name": "github.com/corazawaf/coraza/v3"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "3.8.1"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
]
}
],
"aliases": [],
"database_specific": {
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-436"
],
"github_reviewed": true,
"github_reviewed_at": "2026-10-08T17:51:30Z",
"nvd_published_at": null,
"severity": "MODERATE"
},
"details": "## Summary\nCoraza\u0027s cookie parser (`internal/cookies.ParseCookies`) does not strip ASCII control characters (CTLs) from the edges of a cookie name/value before they\u0027re matched against `REQUEST_COOKIES` / `REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES`. When a CTL sits directly next to the `=` separator, Coraza absorbs it into the adjacent name or value, while several backend cookie parsers trim it away \u2014 so the WAF and the application disagree about the cookie it just received.\n\n## Root cause\n- `ParseCookies` (`internal/cookies/cookies.go:17,26,31`) trims via `net/textproto.TrimString`, which strips only space (`0x20`) and tab (`0x09`).\n- RFC 6265 \u00a74.1.1 defines cookie `name` as an HTTP `token` and `value` as `cookie-octet`, both excluding the full C0 control range (`0x00\u20130x1F`, `0x7F`) \u2014 not just space/tab.\n- Input `a\\v=\\t\u0027` (vertical tab `\\v` next to `=`) keeps `\\v` in the name (`a\\v`), yielding name=`a\\v`, value=`\\t\u0027`.\n\n## Confirmed divergence from real backends\n| Implementation | Name | Value |\n|---|---|---|\n| Coraza (\u003c 3.8.0) | `a\\v` | `\\t\u0027` |\n| Python `http.cookies`, and the Werkzeug/Flask version in the report below | `a` | `\u0027` |\n| PHP `$_COOKIE` | `a` | `\\t\u0027` |\n| Node.js `cookie` package | `a\\v` | `\u0027` |\n\nRFC 6265 itself calls this exact cookie-pair invalid, so there\u0027s no single spec-correct reference \u2014 but Coraza\u0027s boundary handling diverges from 2 of these 3 widely-used backends.\n\nCorrection (2026-10-02): current Werkzeug (3.1.9, checked during review of the 3.8.1 follow-up) keeps `a\\v` as the name, like Node\u0027s `cookie` package. The name divergence therefore applies to PHP and to Python\u0027s `http.cookies`, not to every Werkzeug version.\n\n## Impact\nAn attacker can pad a `Cookie` header with a CTL adjacent to `=` so Coraza indexes a different name/value than the backend application does. A `SecRule` scoped to a specific cookie name or value can then miss the cookie the application actually processes \u2014 a WAF bypass for cookie-carried attacks.\n\n## Affected component\n`internal/cookies.ParseCookies`, consumed via `REQUEST_COOKIES` / `REQUEST_COOKIES_NAMES`.\n\n## Fix\nTrim the full CTL range (not just space/tab) from both ends of the extracted name and value, treating a boundary-adjacent CTL as a delimiter rather than token content \u2014 aligning with RFC 6265\u0027s `token`/`cookie-octet` grammar.\n\nThe fix does not attempt to resolve what happens when a CTL lands in the *interior* of an otherwise-plausible name (e.g. `ab\\vcd`). That case is disputed among the backends themselves \u2014 Python\u0027s `http.cookies` rejects the whole pair, PHP strips the CTL from the middle, Node\u0027s `cookie` package keeps it \u2014 so there is no consensus to converge on. It is left as a separate follow-up rather than guessed at here.\n\n### Implementation note\nThe trim is deliberately hand-rolled (a byte-wise scan on `b \u003c= \u0027 \u0027 || b == 0x7f`, which covers octets `0x00\u20130x20` plus `0x7F`) rather than delegated to the standard library. This is a conscious choice on a security hot path and should not be \"simplified\" away later:\n\n- **`strings.TrimFunc` was measured and rejected.** It invokes its predicate through a func value once per byte scanned, which Go cannot devirtualize through `strings.indexFunc`. On an Apple M2, parsing a 64 KiB CTL-saturated `Cookie` header costs **167.6 \u00b5s** via `TrimFunc` versus **33.9 \u00b5s** byte-wise \u2014 a ~5\u00d7 CPU amplification handed to an attacker, on input that is attacker-controlled and parsed on every request. Allocation counts are identical either way; the cost is purely the per-byte indirect call.\n- **`strings.TrimSpace` is not a substitute.** It misses most of the CTL range (`0x00\u20130x08`, `0x0E\u20130x1F`, `0x7F`) and additionally trims `U+0085` and `U+00A0`, whose multi-byte UTF-8 encodings a backend would not strip \u2014 reintroducing the very parser-disagreement class this advisory closes.\n\nThe byte-wise implementation was verified equivalent to a `TrimFunc`-based one across all 16,843,009 byte strings of length 0\u20133, including invalid UTF-8, with zero mismatches. `BenchmarkParseCookies/CTLFlood` guards the hot path against a future regression to a per-byte indirect call.\n\n## Proof of Concept (original report)\n\n\u003e Hi, @fzipi, i hope you doing well, i\u0027m RelunSec from InsiteTech.jp\n\u003e\n\u003e we discovered a parser confusion in cookie parser, i used a simple flask app that print the cookies\n\u003e\n\u003e ```py\n\u003e from flask import Flask, request\n\u003e\n\u003e app = Flask(__name__)\n\u003e\n\u003e @app.route(\u0027/\u0027)\n\u003e def index():\n\u003e # 1. Print all cookies as a dictionary to your terminal console\n\u003e print(\"All cookies:\", request.cookies)\n\u003e\n\u003e return \"Cookies logged in terminal!\"\n\u003e\n\u003e if __name__ == \u0027__main__\u0027:\n\u003e app.run(debug=True)\n\u003e ```\n\u003e\n\u003e and a go setup\n\u003e\n\u003e ```go\n\u003e package cookies\n\u003e\n\u003e import (\n\u003e \t\"fmt\"\n\u003e \t\"testing\"\n\u003e )\n\u003e\n\u003e func TestParseCookie(t *testing.T) {\n\u003e \tinputs := []string{\n\u003e \"a\\v=\\t\u0027\",\n\u003e \t}\n\u003e\n\u003e \tfmt.Println(\"\\n==========================================\")\n\u003e \tfmt.Println(\" COOKIE PARSE DIRECT LOCAL RUN \")\n\u003e \tfmt.Println(\"==========================================\")\n\u003e\n\u003e \tfor _, input := range inputs {\n\u003e \t\t// Calling the exact lowercase function name from the repo\n\u003e \t\tcookies := ParseCookies(input)\n\u003e\n\u003e \t\tfmt.Printf(\"-\u003e Input: %q\\n\", input)\n\u003e \t\tfmt.Printf(\" Output: %q\\n\", cookies)\n\u003e \t\tfmt.Println(\"------------------------------------------\")\n\u003e \t}\n\u003e \tfmt.Println(\"==========================================\")\n\u003e }\n\u003e ```\n\u003e\n\u003e i runned the go program as you can see\n\u003e\n\u003e ```go\n\u003e relunsec@relunsec:~/software/coraza/internal/cookies$ go test\n\u003e\n\u003e ==========================================\n\u003e COOKIE PARSE DIRECT LOCAL RUN\n\u003e ==========================================\n\u003e -\u003e Input: \"a\\v=\\t\u0027\"\n\u003e Output: map[\"a\\v\":[\"\\t\u0027\"]]\n\u003e ------------------------------------------\n\u003e ==========================================\n\u003e PASS\n\u003e ok \tgithub.com/corazawaf/coraza/v3/internal/cookies\t0.003s\n\u003e ```\n\u003e\n\u003e and then i sended a curl request to the python flask web app\n\u003e\n\u003e ```bash\n\u003e relunsec@relunsec:~/software/coraza/internal/cookies$ curl 127.0.0.1:5000 -H $\u0027Cookie: a\\v=\\t\u0027\n\u003e Cookies logged in terminal!\n\u003e ```\n\u003e\n\u003e and then i saw in the running flask app terminal\n\u003e\n\u003e ```python\n\u003e All cookies: ImmutableMultiDict([(\u0027a\u0027, \"\u0027\")])\n\u003e ```\n\u003e\n\u003e as you can see python see that as the a cookie and the value of it is `\u0027`, while coraza see it in a different name and a value\n\u003e\n\u003e an attacker can craft a crafted payload that evade cookie inspection and then perfom their attack\n\n### Patched in 3.8.1\n\nThe 3.8.0 fix was incomplete. 3.8.1 completes it: trimming control characters in 3.8.0 turned a cookie whose name is only control characters (`\\x01=payload`) into a cookie with an empty name, and empty names have always been skipped, so its value was no longer inspected. Node\u0027s `cookie` package (`{\"\\x01\": \"payload\"}`, `{\"\": \"payload\"}`) and Werkzeug still pass such pairs to the application. 3.8.1 keeps them in `REQUEST_COOKIES` under the name `\"\"`. This is an intentional deviation from ModSecurity v2 and v3, which skip empty names. Upgrade to 3.8.1; 3.8.0 is listed as affected.\n\n\n### Severity (revised 2026-10-02)\n\n`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N` (4.0, Medium).\n\nUnchanged vector; precondition stated per the project\u0027s triage guidance. Attack Complexity is High because the bypass depends on a specific backend cookie parser: the original trim discrepancy affects backends that split `a\\v` as `a` (PHP\u0027s `$_COOKIE`, Python\u0027s `http.cookies`) and only rules keyed on a cookie name, and the 3.8.0 regression affects backends that pass empty or control-character-only cookie names to the application (Node\u0027s `cookie` package, Werkzeug for `\\x01`).\n\nImpact metrics follow the convention used across Coraza\u0027s WAF-bypass advisories: the vulnerable component is Coraza, but the impact lands on the protected application, so Scope is Changed. The bypass hides a payload from inspection; the application still has to be vulnerable to it, so Integrity is Low and Confidentiality is not scored separately.\n\n_AI involvement in this section: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic), via Claude Code, re-derived the CVSS vector from the project\u0027s triage guidance (AGENTS.md, \"CVSS preconditions get verified, not copied from the report\") and drafted this text. A human maintainer (fzipi) chose the `S:C/I:L` impact convention and directed this update._",
"id": "GHSA-g4qm-m288-5cp9",
"modified": "2026-10-08T17:51:31Z",
"published": "2026-10-08T17:51:30Z",
"references": [
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://github.com/corazawaf/coraza/security/advisories/GHSA-g4qm-m288-5cp9"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://github.com/corazawaf/coraza/commit/0b940e197ad9983fb3aa36e84f1f81ff985461af"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://github.com/corazawaf/coraza/commit/9f8521398d1ff023b958fad0b944cac265763866"
},
{
"type": "PACKAGE",
"url": "https://github.com/corazawaf/coraza"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://github.com/corazawaf/coraza/releases/tag/v3.8.1"
}
],
"schema_version": "1.4.0",
"severity": [
{
"score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N",
"type": "CVSS_V3"
}
],
"summary": "Coraza has Cookie Parser Confusion"
}
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
Related by attack behaviour
Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.