ALTCHA is privacy-first software for captcha and bot protection. A cryptographic semantic binding flaw in ALTCHA libraries allows challenge payload splicing, which may enable replay attacks. The HMAC signature does not unambiguously bind challenge parameters to the nonce, allowing an attacker to reinterpret a valid proof-of-work submission with a modified expiration value. This may allow previously solved challenges to be reused beyond their intended lifetime, depending on server-side replay handling and deployment assumptions. The vulnerability primarily impacts abuse-prevention mechanisms such as rate limiting and bot mitigation. It does not directly affect data confidentiality or integrity. This issue has been addressed by enforcing explicit semantic separation between challenge parameters and the nonce during HMAC computation. Users are advised to upgrade to patched versions, which include version 1.0.0 of the altcha Golang package, version 1.0.0 of the altcha Rubygem, version 1.0.0 of the altcha pip package, version 1.0.0 of the altcha Erlang package, version 1.4.1 of the altcha-lib npm package, version 1.3.1 of the altcha-org/altcha Composer package, and version 1.3.0 of the org.altcha:altcha Maven package. As a mitigation, implementations may append a delimiter to the end of the `salt` value prior to HMAC computation (for example, `<salt>?expires=<time>&`). This prevents ambiguity between parameters and the nonce and is backward-compatible with existing implementations, as the delimiter is treated as a standard URL parameter separator.
Metrics
Affected Vendors & Products
Advisories
| Source | ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
Github GHSA |
GHSA-6gvq-jcmp-8959 | ALTCHA Proof-of-Work Vulnerable to Challenge Splicing and Replay |
Fixes
Solution
No solution given by the vendor.
Workaround
No workaround given by the vendor.
References
History
Tue, 16 Dec 2025 01:15:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| Description | ALTCHA is privacy-first software for captcha and bot protection. A cryptographic semantic binding flaw in ALTCHA libraries allows challenge payload splicing, which may enable replay attacks. The HMAC signature does not unambiguously bind challenge parameters to the nonce, allowing an attacker to reinterpret a valid proof-of-work submission with a modified expiration value. This may allow previously solved challenges to be reused beyond their intended lifetime, depending on server-side replay handling and deployment assumptions. The vulnerability primarily impacts abuse-prevention mechanisms such as rate limiting and bot mitigation. It does not directly affect data confidentiality or integrity. This issue has been addressed by enforcing explicit semantic separation between challenge parameters and the nonce during HMAC computation. Users are advised to upgrade to patched versions, which include version 1.0.0 of the altcha Golang package, version 1.0.0 of the altcha Rubygem, version 1.0.0 of the altcha pip package, version 1.0.0 of the altcha Erlang package, version 1.4.1 of the altcha-lib npm package, version 1.3.1 of the altcha-org/altcha Composer package, and version 1.3.0 of the org.altcha:altcha Maven package. As a mitigation, implementations may append a delimiter to the end of the `salt` value prior to HMAC computation (for example, `<salt>?expires=<time>&`). This prevents ambiguity between parameters and the nonce and is backward-compatible with existing implementations, as the delimiter is treated as a standard URL parameter separator. | |
| Title | ALTCHA Proof-of-Work Vulnerable to Challenge Splicing and Replay | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-115 CWE-347 |
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| References |
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| Metrics |
cvssV3_1
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Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: GitHub_M
Published:
Updated: 2025-12-16T00:53:59.401Z
Reserved: 2025-12-15T14:44:59.221Z
Link: CVE-2025-68113
No data.
Status : Received
Published: 2025-12-16T01:15:53.383
Modified: 2025-12-16T01:15:53.383
Link: CVE-2025-68113
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
No data.
Github GHSA