Description

Tornado: Incomplete fix for CVE-2026-35536: cookie attribute injection re-opened via the legacy case-insensitive **kwargs path in set_cookie

Summary

The CVE-2026-35536 fix added a validation loop that rejects [\x00-\x20\x3b\x7f], but only for the hardcoded lowercase keys name/domain/path/samesite. The still-live deprecated **kwargs path writes attacker-supplied attribute values straight into the Morsel with no validation, and because Morsel.__setitem__ is case-insensitive, a capitalized kwarg (Domain=, Path=, SameSite=, Max-Age=) routes to the same reserved attribute while bypassing the loop — re-opening ;-delimited attribute injection.

self.set_cookie("sid", "abc", Domain="evil.com; Secure; SameSite=None")
# Sanity (the canonical lowercase named arg IS blocked):
self.set_cookie("sid", "abc", domain="evil.com; Secure")   # -> http.cookies.CookieError

The patch's regression test (SetCookieForbiddenCharHandler) only exercises the four named params, never the **kwargs path, so the gap is not regression-covered.

Affected code

tornado/web.py → RequestHandler.set_cookie: the validation loop covers only the lowercase named args; the trailing if kwargs: loop does morsel[k] = v with no character validation.

Steps to reproduce

GET /upper (uses Domain= kwarg) emits Set-Cookie: c_upper=v; Domain=evil.com; Secure; SameSite=None; Path=/; GET /lower (uses lowercase domain=) returns a CookieError.

Impact

Injection of independent cookie attributes (force/drop Secure/HttpOnly/SameSite, rebind Domain/Path) — the same impact CVE-2026-35536 closed, via the sibling path the patch missed. Conditional on the app using a capitalized/legacy keyword.

Suggested remediation

Apply the same [\x00-\x20\x3b\x7f] validation to every entry in the **kwargs loop (after normalizing the key case), or remove the deprecated kwargs path; add a regression test for capitalized kwargs.

Credit

Reported as part of an incomplete-patch measurement study (responsible disclosure).

Mitigation

Aliases

References