CPANSA-Punk-TOTP-2026-78655: Punk-TOTP vulnerability

Publisher giterlizzi Document category csaf_security_advisory
Initial release date 2026-08-25T00:00:00 Engine CSAF Perl Toolkit 0.26
Current release date 2026-08-25T00:00:00 Build Date
Current version 1 Status final
CVSS v3.1 Base Score 9.1 Severity Critical
Original language Language en
Also referred to

Vulnerability Description

Punk::Plugin::TOTP versions before 0.05 for Perl allow the second-factor attempt limit to be reset by replaying an earlier session cookie because the challenge route counts failures in the session.

The POST handler on challenge_path keeps the failure count as tries inside the totp_pending record in the session, raising it on each rejected code and deleting the pending record once it reaches attempts, five by default. Punk::Session carries the session in a signed cookie unless the application declares a store, and keeps no server-side record, so an earlier value of the same session stays valid until the expiry stamped inside it. A client that saves the cookie before its failed attempts and presents it again gets the pending record back with its counter, and the limit never fires. The replayed record is accepted while its own expiry, pending_ttl seconds from the challenge and 300 by default, has not passed.

Sessions declared with a store are not affected: the pending record and its counter then live server-side.

The attempt limit does not bound guessing of the second factor, which is left to the per-address rate limit the plugin registers on the same path, 30 requests per 60 seconds.

Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-78655

Vulnerability Description

Punk::Plugin::TOTP versions before 0.05 for Perl allow the second-factor attempt limit to be reset by replaying an earlier session cookie because the challenge route counts failures in the session.

The POST handler on challenge_path keeps the failure count as tries inside the totp_pending record in the session, raising it on each rejected code and deleting the pending record once it reaches attempts, five by default. Punk::Session carries the session in a signed cookie unless the application declares a store, and keeps no server-side record, so an earlier value of the same session stays valid until the expiry stamped inside it. A client that saves the cookie before its failed attempts and presents it again gets the pending record back with its counter, and the limit never fires. The replayed record is accepted while its own expiry, pending_ttl seconds from the challenge and 300 by default, has not passed.

Sessions declared with a store are not affected: the pending record and its counter then live server-side.

The attempt limit does not bound guessing of the second factor, which is left to the per-address rate limit the plugin registers on the same path, 30 requests per 60 seconds.

Weakness CWE-307 : Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts

Product status

Known affected
Product Score
Punk-TOTP less than 0.05
CVSS Version CVSS Vector CVSS Base Score CVSS Base Severity
3.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N 9.1 Critical
Fixed

giterlizzi

Namespace: https://github.com/giterlizzi/

gdt@cpan.org

References

Revision history

Version Date of the revision Summary of the revision
1 Tue Aug 25 00:00:00 2026 First release

Sharing rules

TLP:WHITE
For the TLP version see: https://www.first.org/tlp/