GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Hex

GHSA-w4f7-4cxr-rv3c cowboy and gun affected by an HTTP Request/Response Splitting vulnerability

MEDIUM Published 2026-06-08 Modified 2026-07-29 Official page ↗
Aliases
CVE-2026-43966
Ecosystem
Hex
Packages
cowboy, gun
Severity
Moderate
CVSS vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N
Weaknesses
CWE-113
Reviewed
2026-07-29

Affected packages

• Hex cowboy: < 2.16.0 → fixed in 2.16.0 • Hex gun: < 2.16.0 → fixed in 2.16.0

Description

Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences in HTTP Headers ('HTTP Request/Response Splitting') vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows HTTP response splitting via non-VCHAR bytes in structured-fields string values. cow_http_struct_hd:escape_string/2 in cowlib only escapes \ and ", passing all other bytes through verbatim. This creates an encoder/decoder asymmetry: the matching parser accepts only printable ASCII (0x20–0x7E, excluding " and \), but the encoder emits any byte including CR and LF. An application that builds a structured HTTP header via cow_http_struct_hd:item/1 (or a higher-level wrapper such as cow_http_hd:wt_protocol/1) from attacker-controlled input can have \r\n injected into the serialized header value. Once on the wire, the injected CRLF terminates the current header and any following bytes are interpreted as a new header, enabling HTTP response splitting. This issue affects cowlib from 2.9.0.

Related

Alias · CVE (1)

  • CVE-2026-43966 Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences in HTTP Headers ('HTTP Request/Response Splitting') vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows HTTP… vulnerability

Weakness · CWE (1)

  • CWE-113 Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences in HTTP Headers weakness

References