CVE-2026-40560
Description
A flaw was found in Starman. Starman versions before 0.4018 for Perl incorrectly prioritize the "Content-Length" header over "Transfer-Encoding: chunked" when both are present in an HTTP request, violating RFC 7230 3.3.3. A remote attacker could exploit this improper header precedence to perform HTTP Request Smuggling, allowing them to send malicious HTTP requests through a front-end reverse proxy. This could lead to unauthorized access or manipulation of web traffic.
Statement
Red Hat Product Security has determined that this vulnerability does not affect any currently supported Red Hat product. This assessment may evolve based on further analysis and discovery. For more information about this vulnerability and the products it affects, please see the linked references.
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Non-Repudiation,Access Control
Technical Impact: Unexpected State; Hide Activities; Bypass Protection Mechanism
An attacker could create HTTP messages to exploit a number of weaknesses including 1) the message can trick the web server to associate a URL with another URL's webpage and caching the contents of the webpage (web cache poisoning attack), 2) the message can be structured to bypass the firewall protection mechanisms and gain unauthorized access to a web application, and 3) the message can invoke a script or a page that returns client credentials (similar to a Cross Site Scripting attack).
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