Remember-me sign-in guard reads a session key that is never written in ash_authentication, allowing session replacement

Summary

Authentication Bypass by Spoofing vulnerability in team-alembic ash_authentication allows an attacker who can plant a remember-me cookie in a victim's browser to replace that victim's authenticated session with one for the attacker's own account. AshAuthentication.Plug.Helpers.sign_in_using_remember_me/3 skips re-authenticating an already-signed-in visitor by checking the session for "<subject_name>_token", but store_in_session/2 writes that key only when require_token_presence_for_authentication? is enabled and otherwise writes the bare subject name. At the default setting the guard therefore reads a key that is never written, its already-signed-in branch is unreachable, and the remember-me sign-in runs on every request through the per-request browser pipeline plug. A planted remember-me cookie is consequently honoured even for a visitor holding a live authenticated session, so whatever the victim enters afterwards lands in data the attacker controls. The read path in authenticate_resource_from_session/4 selects the key correctly, so the guard and the reader disagree about which key holds the session. This issue affects ash_authentication: from 4.10.0 before 4.15.0 and from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14.

Timeline

1. Sep 17, 2026, 9:57 PM UTCCVE published
2. Sep 18, 2026, 2:24 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: total

3. Sep 18, 2026, 2:31 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• ash_authentication

  From 4.10.0 · fixed in 4.15.0; From 5.0.0-rc.0 · fixed in 5.0.0-rc.14

• team-alembic/ash_authentication

  Version range not reported

References 6