Medium [CVE-2026-55688] Cookie injection allows planting cookies for unrelated domains

The AsyncHttpClient (AHC) library allows Java applications to easily execute HTTP requests and asynchronously process HTTP responses.

In versions from 2.0.0 prior to 2.16.0 and from 3.0.0.Beta1 prior to 3.0.11, ThreadSafeCookieStore stored a cookie under the value of its Domain attribute without verifying that the responding host is allowed to set a cookie for that domain, leading to a cookie tossing / cookie injection issue.

A host the client connects to can therefore plant a cookie scoped to an unrelated domain, and the client will then send that cookie on later requests to that domain. Applications that use a single AsyncHttpClient instance - and thus the default, shared CookieStore - to reach both an attacker-influenced host and a trusted host are impacted.

This issue has been fixed in versions 2.16.0 and 3.0.11. The ThreadSafeCookieStore component did not properly verify the domain attribute of cookies, allowing a malicious host to set a cookie for an unrelated domain.

This could lead to a cookie injection issue, impacting applications that use a single AsyncHttpClient instance to connect to both untrusted and trusted hosts. This Moderate impact flaw in the AsyncHttpClient library, affecting Red Hat Enterprise Application Platform, allows a malicious server to inject cookies for unrelated domains.