Punk versions before 0.18 for Perl allow session cookie forgery via an empty default HMAC key when a session is declared without a secret.

The session keyword freezes its options onto the application as given: it does not require a secret, warn, or refuse to start when one is absent. The cookie read and the write-back both default that key to the empty string, so a declaration with no secret option, or with an undefined or empty one, signs and verifies with a zero-length HMAC-SHA256 key.

An attacker who knows the cookie format can then mint one offline carrying any contents the session holds, such as a user identifier or a role. Nothing marks the misconfiguration at runtime: cookies are well formed and sessions round-trip as expected.
Advisories

No advisories yet.

Fixes

Solution

Upgrade to Punk 0.18 or later.


Workaround

For deployments that cannot upgrade to 0.18, declare the session keyword with a non-empty secret. The secret keyword fails closed, so sourcing the key through it turns a missing configuration path or an unset environment variable into a startup error.

History

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 19:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Punk versions before 0.18 for Perl allow session cookie forgery via an empty default HMAC key when a session is declared without a secret. The session keyword freezes its options onto the application as given: it does not require a secret, warn, or refuse to start when one is absent. The cookie read and the write-back both default that key to the empty string, so a declaration with no secret option, or with an undefined or empty one, signs and verifies with a zero-length HMAC-SHA256 key. An attacker who knows the cookie format can then mint one offline carrying any contents the session holds, such as a user identifier or a role. Nothing marks the misconfiguration at runtime: cookies are well formed and sessions round-trip as expected.
Title Punk versions before 0.18 for Perl allow session cookie forgery via an empty default HMAC key when a session is declared without a secret
Weaknesses CWE-1394
References

Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: CPANSec

Published:

Updated: 2026-08-22T19:07:10.053Z

Reserved: 2026-08-18T11:59:49.642Z

Link: CVE-2026-75870

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-08-22T14:16:33.813

Modified: 2026-08-22T19:16:20.430

Link: CVE-2026-75870

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-08-22T14:45:03Z

Weaknesses