CVE-2026-11525: undici vulnerable to Set-Cookie SameSite attribute downgrade via permissive substring matching
When undici parses a Set-Cookie header, it accepts any SameSite attribute value that contains Strict, Lax, or None as a substring, rather than the case-insensitive exact match specified by RFC 6265. Non-spec values are silently mapped to one of the three standard tokens:
SameSite=NoneOfYourBusinessis parsed asNone, the most permissive setting.SameSite=StrictLaxis parsed asLax, a downgrade fromStrict.
Affected applications are those that consume Set-Cookie headers from server responses (for example via undici’s fetch or proxy code paths) and then forward or rely on the parsed sameSite attribute. A malicious or non-compliant server can coerce the consumer’s view of a cookie’s SameSite policy to a weaker value, silently degrading the SameSite enforcement the cookie is supposed to provide.
This was introduced in undici 5.15.0 when the cookies feature was added.
References
Code Behaviors & Features
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