CVE-2023-26136 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-1321 vulnerability in tough-cookie. 2 public exploit references exist, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for tough-cookie — see the affected versions and patch details below.
tough-cookie Prototype Pollution vulnerability
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-26136.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-26136 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
tough-cookienpmDescription
Versions of the package tough-cookie before 4.1.3 are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution due to improper handling of Cookies when using CookieJar in rejectPublicSuffixes=false mode. This issue arises from the manner in which the objects are initialized.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | tough-cookie | all versions | 4.1.3npm install tough-cookie@4.1.3 |
Affected Products
tough-cookiesalesforceResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for tough-cookie, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update tough-cookie to 4.1.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-26136 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform | org.jboss.hal/hal-console:3.3.19.Final-redhat-00001 | RHSA-2023:5488 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 for RHEL 8 | eap7-activemq-artemis-0:2.16.0-15.redhat_00049.1.el8eap | RHSA-2023:5485 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 for RHEL 9 | eap7-activemq-artemis-0:2.16.0-15.redhat_00049.1.el9eap | RHSA-2023:5486 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 on RHEL 7 | eap7-activemq-artemis-0:2.16.0-15.redhat_00049.1.el7eap | RHSA-2023:5484 |
| Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Containers 1.8 | rhmtc/openshift-migration-ui-rhel8:v1.8.2-2 | RHSA-2023:7222 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 | openshift4/ose-monitoring-plugin-rhel8:v4.14.0-202310201027.p0.g8757197.assembly.stream | RHSA-2023:5006 |
| RHODF-4.14-RHEL-9 | odf4/odf-multicluster-console-rhel9:v4.14.13-3 | RHSA-2025:0323 |
| RHODF-4.15-RHEL-9 | odf4/odf-multicluster-console-rhel9:v4.15.9-1 | RHSA-2025:0164 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-26136 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.