GHSA-92vm-wfm5-mxvv CVE-2016-1000236

cookie-signature Timing Attack

Medium npm

Severity: 4.4 / 10; Medium · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS): 0.90%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 59.57% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition')
Fix: 1.0.4; Upgrade cookie-signature to this version or later

Description

Affected versions of cookie-signature are vulnerable to timing attacks as a result of using a fail-early comparison instead of a constant-time comparison.

Timing attacks remove the exponential increase in entropy gained from increased secret length, by providing per-character feedback on the correctness of a guess via miniscule timing differences.

Under favorable network conditions, an attacker can exploit this to guess the secret in no more than charset*length guesses, instead of charset^length guesses required were the timing attack not present.

Recommendation

Update to 1.0.4 or later.

Affected versions

npm

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
cookie-signature	`< 1.0.4`	`1.0.4`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

cookie-signature npm → `1.0.4`

npm

npm install cookie-signature@1.0.4

yarn

yarn add cookie-signature@1.0.4

pnpm

pnpm add cookie-signature@1.0.4

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 4.4

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Attack vector: Network
Attack complexity: High
Privileges required: High
User interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: None
Availability: None

Weakness

CWE-362: Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition')

The product contains a concurrent code sequence that requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence operating concurrently.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: In languages that support it, use synchronization primitives. Only wrap these around critical code to minimize the impact on performance.
Architecture and Design: Use thread-safe capabilities such as the data access abstraction in Spring.
Architecture and Design: Minimize the usage of shared resources in order to remove as much complexity as possible from the control flow and to reduce the likelihood of unexpected conditions occurring. Additionally, this will minimize the amount of synchronization necessary and may even help to reduce the likelihood of a denial of service where an attacker may be able to repeatedly trigger a critical section (CWE-400).
Implementation: When using multithreading and operating on shared variables, only use thread-safe functions.
Implementation: Use atomic operations on shared variables. Be wary of innocent-looking constructs such as "x++". This may appear atomic at the code layer, but it is actually non-atomic at the instruction layer, since it involves a read, followed by a computation, followed by a write.
Implementation: Use a mutex if available, but be sure to avoid related weaknesses such as CWE-412.
Implementation: Avoid double-checked locking (CWE-609) and other implementation errors that arise when trying to avoid the overhead of synchronization.
Implementation: Disable interrupts or signals over critical parts of the code, but also make sure that the code does not go into a large or infinite loop.
Implementation: Use the volatile type modifier for critical variables to avoid unexpected compiler optimization or reordering. This does not necessarily solve the synchronization problem, but it can help.
Architecture and Design, Operation: Run your code using the lowest privileges that are required to accomplish the necessary tasks [REF-76]. If possible, create isolated accounts with limited privileges that are only used for a single task. That way, a successful attack will not immediately give the attacker access to the rest of the software or its environment. For example, database applications rarely need to run as the database administrator, especially in day-to-day operations.

References

Advisories

nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-1000236

Packages

github.com/tj/node-cookie-signature

Timeline

Jan 6, 2020 Published
Nov 8, 2023 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-5wjr-9356-4wc8 Tokio: Race condition in `tokio::time::Interval`	Medium	Same weakness, CWE-362
GHSA-44jh-23m7-hpcf @better-auth/drizzle-adapter: Concurrent requests can exceed rate limits on PostgreSQL	Medium	Same weakness, CWE-362
GHSA-494h-xx7x-5frh Microsoft Security Advisory CVE-2026-70183 - ASP.NET Core Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability	High	Same weakness, CWE-362
GO-2026-6617 HTTP/2 server crash due to HPACK encoder race in net/http	High	Same weakness, CWE-362
GHSA-xvgh-hmx8-9xxf Backstage: Improper task state validation in Scaffolder backend	High	Same weakness, CWE-362
GHSA-pr7f-p5mw-fc87 vLLM: Incomplete CVE-2025-62164 remediation can be bypassed by concurrent prompt parts	Medium	Same weakness, CWE-362
GHSA-2hw9-mc66-jc2q Wasmtime: Preemption and traps during bulk operations enable breaking internal VM state	Low	Same weakness, CWE-362
GHSA-9h85-g7w3-rh49 ViewComponent: Reused Component Instances Retain Stale Render Context	Medium	Same weakness, CWE-362

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