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Session Fixation in social-auth-core

Moderate
nijel published GHSA-vqg6-3fw6-j9jg Jun 30, 2026

Package

social-auth-core (PyPI)

Affected versions

<5.0.0

Patched versions

5.0.0

Description

Impact

The partial-pipeline resume mechanism accepted partial_token as a bearer credential without binding it to the browser session that created it.

Applications using resumable partial pipeline steps could allow an attacker to start an authentication flow, obtain a valid partial token and verification data, and cause a victim's browser to resume that attacker-controlled flow. This could authenticate the victim's browser as the attacker's account.

The issue affects applications using partial pipeline steps such as mail_validation or custom steps decorated with @partial.

Patches

The issue has been fixed by binding partial pipeline resumes to the originating browser session.

Users should upgrade to a patched version.

Fix:

Workarounds

Applications that cannot upgrade immediately should disable resumable partial pipeline steps, including mail_validation and custom steps decorated with @partial.

If those flows are required, applications should avoid accepting partial resume links from untrusted contexts until a patched version can be deployed.

There is no complete workaround while continuing to use the vulnerable partial-pipeline resume mechanism.

References

Reported through GitHub private vulnerability reporting by Liyi Zhou, Ziyue Wang, Strick, Maurice, and Chenchen Yu from the University of Sydney security research team.

Reporter references:

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2026-57179

Weaknesses

Session Fixation

Authenticating a user, or otherwise establishing a new user session, without invalidating any existing session identifier gives an attacker the opportunity to steal authenticated sessions. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits