Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Incomplete naming schema and API usage patterns in py/insecure-cookie

Open
#21,647 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
52/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
python
Domain
security

Research direction

Start at the py/insecure-cookie rule and inspect the cookie.isSensitive predicate and the set_cookie handling described in the issue. Compare the listed token names and direct Set-Cookie examples against current behavior; done means the supported authentication-cookie patterns are detected without relying only on framework methods.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

  1. The existing cookie.isSensitive predicate seems to miss common modern authentication token patterns. I have found some and listed them below.
  2. The rule currently relies primarily on specific framework methods (e.g., set_cookie). It ignores direct HTTP manipulation, which is also very common.

code example:

from flask import Flask, Response, make_response

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/login")
def login():
    resp = make_response("Logged in")
    resp.set_cookie("authKey", "secret123") # $ Alert[py/insecure-cookie]
    resp.set_cookie("accessToken", "secret123") # $ missing
    resp.set_cookie("access_token", "secret123") # missing
    resp.set_cookie("auth_token", "secret123") # missing
    resp.set_cookie("jwt", "secret123") # $ missing
    resp.set_cookie("oauth_token", "secret123") # $ missing


    # cannot support this
    resp.headers.add("Set-Cookie", "authKey=secret123") # missing

    # This is also common, but it seems more difficult to support this.
    from http.cookies import SimpleCookie
    resp = make_response("Logged in")
    cookie = SimpleCookie()
    cookie["session"]['authKey'] = "secret123" # missing
    # cookie["session"]["httponly"] = True
    # cookie["session"]["secure"] = True
    for key, morsel in cookie.items():
        resp.headers.add('Set-Cookie', morsel.OutputString())
    return resp
Dominant language
CodeQL
Stars
10.1k
Forks
2.1k
Avg merge
2d 16h
Merged PRs (30d)
143

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from github/codeql

All issues in github/codeql

Similar issues

More Security issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.