PAC4J <5.7.10 or <6.4.1: CSRF via String.hashCode Collision
CVE-2026-40458 Published on April 17, 2026
Cross-Site Request Forgery in PAC4J
PAC4J is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF). A malicious attacker can craft a specially designed website which, when visited by a user, will automatically submit a forged cross-site request with a token whose hash collides with the victim's legitimate CSRF token. Importantly, the attacker does not need to know the victims CSRF token or its hash prior to the attack. Collisions in the deterministic String.hashCode() function can be computed directly, reducing the effective token's security space to 32 bits. This bypasses CSRF protection, allowing profile updates, password changes, account linking, and any other state-changing operations to be performed without the victim's consent.
This issue was fixed in PAC4J versions 5.7.10 and 6.4.1
Weakness Type
What is a Session Riding Vulnerability?
The web application does not, or can not, sufficiently verify whether a well-formed, valid, consistent request was intentionally provided by the user who submitted the request. When a web server is designed to receive a request from a client without any mechanism for verifying that it was intentionally sent, then it might be possible for an attacker to trick a client into making an unintentional request to the web server which will be treated as an authentic request. This can be done via a URL, image load, XMLHttpRequest, etc. and can result in exposure of data or unintended code execution.
CVE-2026-40458 has been classified to as a Session Riding vulnerability or weakness.
Affected Versions
PAC4J:- Version 5.0 and below 5.7.10 is affected.
- Version 6.0 and below 6.4.1 is affected.