NetSight
critical9.1

CVE-2026-75870

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.

Impact

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.

Affected products

ProductAffected versions
Punk
before 0.18

Versions were read from the advisory text. No structured product data has been published for this record yet.

Weakness classification

References