GHSA-2xf4-cg6j-vhgq
symfony/polyfill-intl-idn: xn-- labels with ASCII-only Punycode payloads are treated as equivalent to their decoded form
Details
### Description
`symfony/polyfill-intl-idn` provides a userland implementation of `idn_to_utf8()` and `idn_to_ascii()` for runtimes that lack the `intl` extension. Its `Idn::process()` method decodes labels prefixed with `xn--` using Punycode but never enforces the validity criterion added in UTS #46 revision 33 Section 4 step 4.1.2: after a successful Punycode decode, the result must contain at least one non-ASCII code point.
As a consequence, `xn--` labels whose Punycode payload is empty (`xn--`) or decodes to a string made of only ASCII code points (e.g. `xn--kc1zs4-`) are accepted by the polyfill while PHP's native `ext-intl` rejects them with `IDNA_ERROR_INVALID_ACE_LABEL`. Originally unequal domain names are therefore regarded as equal, which can lead to blacklist bypassing, inconsistent URL parsing and server-side request forgery (similar to CVE-2024-12224).
Example with `IDNA_USE_STD3_RULES | IDNA_CHECK_BIDI | IDNA_CHECK_CONTEXTJ | IDNA_NONTRANSITIONAL_TO_ASCII`:
| Input | Polyfill output | Native `ext-intl` output | | --- | --- | --- | | `poc.xn--kc1zs4-.com` | `poc.kc1zs4.com` | `false` (`errors=1024`) | | `poc.kc1zs4.xn--` | `poc.kc1zs4.` | `false` (`errors=1024`) |
Applications using the polyfill to canonicalise or compare hostnames inherit the inconsistency.
### Resolution
`Idn::process()` now records `IDNA_ERROR_INVALID_ACE_LABEL` when a Punycode payload decodes to an empty string or to a string containing only ASCII code points, matching the native `ext-intl` behaviour and UTS #46 revision 33.
The patch for this issue is available [here](https://github.com/symfony/polyfill/commit/1be936e2491ccebe152bd736dfc91eb1422c8bec) for branch 1.x.
### Credits
Symfony would like to thank Nazy Mad for reporting the issue and Nicolas Grekas for providing the fix.
Are you affected?
Enter the version of the package you're using.
Affected packages
1.17.1 Fixed in: 1.38.1 composer require symfony/polyfill:^1.38.1 1.17.1 Fixed in: 1.38.1 composer require symfony/polyfill-intl-idn:^1.38.1 References
- https://github.com/symfony/polyfill/security/advisories/GHSA-2xf4-cg6j-vhgq [WEB]
- https://github.com/symfony/polyfill/commit/1be936e2491ccebe152bd736dfc91eb1422c8bec [WEB]
- https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/symfony/polyfill-intl-idn/CVE-2026-46644.yaml [WEB]
- https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/symfony/polyfill/CVE-2026-46644.yaml [WEB]
- https://github.com/symfony/polyfill [PACKAGE]
- https://symfony.com/cve-2026-46644 [WEB]