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.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 4.0 Base Score: 6.3 (MEDIUM)
- CVSS 4.0 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/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X)
- CVSS 3.1 Base Score: 5.3
- CVSS 3.1 Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N)
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