CVE-2026-39972
mercure has Topic Selector Cache Key Collision
Description
### Impact A cache key collision vulnerability in `TopicSelectorStore` allows an attacker to poison the match result cache, potentially causing private updates to be delivered to unauthorized subscribers or blocking delivery to authorized ones. The cache key was constructed by concatenating the topic selector and topic with an underscore separator: ```go k = "m_" + topicSelector + "_" + topic ``` Because both topic selectors and topics can contain underscores, two distinct pairs can produce the same key: ``` selector="foo_bar" topic="baz" → key: "m_foo_bar_baz" selector="foo" topic="bar_baz" → key: "m_foo_bar_baz" ``` An attacker who can subscribe to the hub or publish updates with crafted topic names can exploit this to bypass authorization checks on private updates. ### Patches The vulnerability is fixed by replacing string-encoded cache keys with typed Go struct keys that are inherently collision-free: ```go type matchCacheKey struct { topicSelector string topic string } ``` The internal `TopicSelectorStoreCache` interface and sharded cache abstraction have also been removed in favor of a single typed otter cache. Users should upgrade to version **0.22.0** or later. ### Workarounds Disable the topic selector cache by setting `topic_selector_cache` to `-1` in the Caddyfile, or by passing a cache size of `0` when using the library directly. This eliminates the vulnerability at the cost of reduced performance.
How to fix CVE-2026-39972
To remediate CVE-2026-39972, upgrade the affected package to a fixed version below.
- —upgrade to 0.22.0 or later
Is CVE-2026-39972 being exploited?
Low — EPSS is 0.0%, meaning exploitation activity has not been observed at scale.
Affected packages (1)
- from 0, < 0.22.0
CVSS scores
| Source | Version | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| osv | CVSS 4.0 | — | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |