CVE-2026-55735: Guardian.revoke/3 acts on unverified token claims, allowing forged-token session revocation

Published Aug 1, 2026
·
Updated

Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature in ueberauth guardian allows an unauthenticated attacker to revoke a victim's session with a forged token.

Guardian.revoke/3 in lib/guardian.ex decodes the supplied token with peek/1, which performs no signature verification (it only base64-decodes the JWT header and payload). The resulting unverified claims are forwarded directly to the configured token module's revoke callback and the implementation's onrevoke callback, a state-mutating sink. The sibling operations refresh/2 and exchange/4 both call decodeandverify first, so the signature is checked before anything acts on the claims; revoke/3 is the only state-mutating path that acts on claims without verifying the signature.

An attacker who knows or guesses a victim's identifying claim values (jti, sub) can forge a JWT carrying those claims, sign it with an arbitrary key, and submit it to any endpoint that funnels a caller-supplied token into Guardian.revoke/3 (the standard logout / session-revocation pattern). When the token module mutates state keyed by the claims (whitelist deletion or blacklist insertion, for example a GuardianDb-style store), the victim's legitimate session is evicted. This is an unauthenticated session-revocation denial of service; the attacker never needs the signing secret.

This issue affects guardian: from 1.0.0 before 2.4.1.

Affected Software

2 affected components
guardian>1.0.0<=2.4.1
ueberauth Guardian>=1.0.0<2.4.1

Remediation

Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.

  1. Upgrade

    Upgrade guardian to a version that resolves this vulnerability.

    Fixed in 2.4.1
  2. Configuration

    Ensure Guardian.revoke/3 does cryptographic signature verification on the submitted JWT claims (use the same decode_and_verify approach used by refresh/2 and exchange/4), rather than decoding with peek/1 which performs no signature verification.

    Guardian (ueberauth guardian) Verify JWT signature in revoke/3 path (decode_and_verify) = enabled

Event History

Aug 1, 2026
CVE Published
via MITRE·06:46 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·06:46 PM
DescriptionWeakness
Data Sourced
via NVD·07:16 PM
RemedyDescriptionSeverityWeaknessAffected Software

Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the severity of CVE-2026-55735?

CVE-2026-55735 has a risk score of 45, indicating moderate severity.

2

How do I fix CVE-2026-55735?

To fix CVE-2026-55735, ensure proper signature verification is implemented for token claims in the guardian library.

3

What impact does CVE-2026-55735 have on my application?

CVE-2026-55735 allows unauthenticated attackers to revoke user sessions, compromising user access.

4

Which versions of Guardian are affected by CVE-2026-55735?

CVE-2026-55735 affects versions of Guardian that utilize the Guardian.revoke/3 function without proper verification.

5

Is my data safe from CVE-2026-55735?

Due to the vulnerability in CVE-2026-55735, user sessions may be at risk, potentially exposing data to unauthorized access.

Contact

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