Hono missing validation of cookie name on write path in setCookie()

Overview

Summary

Cookie names are not validated on the write path when using setCookie(), serialize(), or serializeSigned() to generate Set-Cookie headers.

While certain cookie attributes such as domain and path are validated, the cookie name itself may contain invalid characters.

This results in inconsistent handling of cookie names between parsing (read path) and serialization (write path).

Details

When applications use setCookie(), serialize(), or serializeSigned() with a user-controlled cookie name, invalid values (e.g., containing control characters such as \r or \n) can be used to construct malformed Set-Cookie header values.

For example:

Set-Cookie: legit
X-Injected: evil=value

However, in modern runtimes such as Node.js and Cloudflare Workers, such invalid header values are rejected and result in a runtime error before the response is sent.

As a result, the reported header injection / response splitting behavior could not be reproduced in these environments.

Impact

Applications that pass untrusted input as the cookie name to setCookie(), serialize(), or serializeSigned() may encounter runtime errors due to invalid header values.

In tested environments, malformed Set-Cookie headers are rejected before being sent, and the reported header injection behavior could not be reproduced.

This issue primarily affects correctness and robustness rather than introducing a confirmed exploitable vulnerability.

Affected packages

• hono < 4.12.12

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• hono 4.12.12