U.S. flag   An official website of the United States government
Dot gov

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Https

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (Dot gov) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

CVE-2026-43971 Detail

Description

Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows Link header directive smuggling via unescaped special characters in cow_link:link/1. cow_link:do_link/1 in cowlib interpolates the target URI, rel value, and attribute keys directly into the serialized Link: header value without escaping or token-grammar validation. A > byte in target prematurely closes the URI slot, allowing an attacker to append additional link entries with attacker-chosen rel directives. A " or \ in rel escapes the quoted string and opens new parameters. Any byte — including whitespace, =, and " — in an attribute key is emitted verbatim. Because browsers act on Link: directives such as rel="preconnect", rel="preload", and rel="prerender", an attacker who can influence these fields in an application that round-trips parsed Link headers through cow_link:link/1 can force victim browsers to make out-of-band connections to attacker-controlled origins. This issue affects cowlib: from 2.9.0 onward.


Metrics

NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

Nist CVSS score does not match with CNA score
CNA:  EEF
CVSS-B 6.3 MEDIUM
Vector:  CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

By selecting these links, you will be leaving NIST webspace. We have provided these links to other web sites because they may have information that would be of interest to you. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not, from this page. There may be other web sites that are more appropriate for your purpose. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these sites. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned on these sites. Please address comments about this page to [email protected].

URL Source(s) Tag(s)
EEF
EEF

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-116 Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output EEF  

Change History

1 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2026-43971
NVD Published Date:
08/18/2026
NVD Last Modified:
08/18/2026
Source:
EEF