Security Advisories (1)
CVE-2026-75870 (2026-08-22)

Punk versions before 0.18 for Perl allow session cookie forgery via an empty default HMAC key when a session is declared without a secret. The session keyword freezes its options onto the application as given: it does not require a secret, warn, or refuse to start when one is absent. The cookie read and the write-back both default that key to the empty string, so a declaration with no secret option, or with an undefined or empty one, signs and verifies with a zero-length HMAC-SHA256 key. An attacker who knows the cookie format can then mint one offline carrying any contents the session holds, such as a user identifier or a role. Nothing marks the misconfiguration at runtime: cookies are well formed and sessions round-trip as expected.

Changes for version 0.15 - 2026-08-17

  • A trailing slash on the request path no longer 404s: GET /account/ answers the route declared as GET /account. The retry runs only after every declared route, API operation and mount has missed, so nothing that already matched changes
    • a *splat still captures its trailing slash, and a mounted app is still handed the path it was sent, since only it knows whether /docs and /docs/ differ. Repeated slashes collapse, and "/" is left alone. A trimmed path that matches a different method still answers 405 with its Allow list.

Documentation

the Punk command line

Modules

a MVC web framework
the per-application registry and boot compiler
the authentication battery
password hashing
cross-origin resource sharing
single-use CSRF tokens
the punk command line: registry, dispatcher and commands
YAML configuration with secrets kept out of the file
the per-request object
base class for Punk controllers
the development error page
an async result that runs on the loop, or blocks
scaffold a new Punk application
security response headers
a level-based logger
the storage-agnostic model tier
the default DBI backend for Punk models
a non-blocking backend for Punk models
a directory of markdown as a documentation site
the api mount: spec-first operations
base class for Punk plugins
rate limiting and IP blocking over Hyperman's shared arena
a lazy wrapper over the PSGI environment
a response builder
the compiled-at-boot route tables (XS)
the handle an under returns
a Server-Sent Events stream
the bounded body of a ranged send_file response
signed cookie sessions
serving files from a directory
an in-process test client for Punk applications
a pure-Perl RFC 6455 codec for testing WebSocket servers
the client side of one WebSocket connection
the outbound HTTP agent on the context
an uploaded file from a multipart form
collecting request validation
the Template::Stencil view engine
the pluggable view engine registry (XS)
a WebSocket connection
pub/sub groups of WebSocket connections

Provides

in bench/apps/cat-lib/BenchCat.pm
in bench/apps/cat-lib/BenchCat/Controller/Root.pm