Medium severity · published Feb 26, 2026
CVE-2026-27840
ZITADEL's truncated opaque tokens are still valid
4.3
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
ZITADEL is an open source identity management platform. Starting in version 2.31.0 and prior to versions 3.4.7 and 4.11.0, opaque OIDC access tokens in the v2 format truncated to 80 characters are still considered valid. Zitadel uses a symmetric AES encryption for opaque tokens. The cleartext payload is a concatenation of a couple of identifiers, such as a token ID and user ID. Internally Zitadel has 2 different versions of token payloads. v1 tokens are no longer created, but are still verified as to not invalidate existing session after upgrade. The cleartext payload has a format of `<token_id>:<user_id>`. v2 tokens distinguished further where the `token_id` is of the format `v2_<oidc_session_id>-at_<access_token_id>`. V1 token authZ/N session data is retrieved from the database using the (simple) `token_id` value and `user_id` value. The `user_id` (called `subject` in some parts of our code) was used as being the trusted user ID. V2 token authZ/N session data is retrieved from the database using the `oidc_session_id` and `access_token_id` and in this case the `user_id` from the token is ignored and taken from the session data in the database. By truncating the token to 80 chars, the user_id is now missing from the cleartext of the v2 token. The back-end still accepts this for above reasons. This issue is not considered exploitable, but may look awkward when reproduced. The patch in versions 4.11.0 and 3.4.7 resolves the issue by verifying the `user_id` from the token against the session data from the database. No known workarounds are available.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 5% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
ZI
zitadel · zitadel
>= 4.0.0, < 4.11.0; >= 3.0.0, < 3.4.7; >= 2.31.0, <= 2.71.19 · source: vendor, NVD
Affected product
ZI
zitadel
zitadel
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