Laravel 4 Remember-Me Cookies Stay Valid After the User Logs Out

Published as "Laravel Hijacked authentication cookies vulnerability"

medium Laravel Laravel framework · Last reviewed Nov 10, 2026

CVE: No CVE assigned
GHSA: GHSA-p62r-7637-3wwc
Packagist: PKSA-6wgv-k7p1-h4fg
Reported: May 15, 2024

Lets someone with a stolen remember-me cookie keep logging in as that user, even after the user logs out or resets their password.

Affected and fixed versions

In laravel/framework. Find the row for the version you run, and update to the release next to it.

If you run	Update to	Support
4.0.0 – 4.1.25	4.1.26

Upgrade

Run the line for the branch you are on.

composer require laravel/framework:^4.1.26

What this means

If someone got hold of a user's "remember me" cookie, they could keep using it to log in as that user for a long time. The user logging out or resetting their password didn't cancel it.

See the Laravel 4.1.26 upgrade notes.

Who is affected

Apps on laravel/framework 4.0 or 4.1 before 4.1.26 that offer Laravel's "remember me" login option. The attacker first needs a copy of the cookie. Apps that don't use "remember me" aren't affected.

What to do

Update to 4.1.26. You also need to add a remember_token column to your users table, or whichever table holds your users. The upgrade notes explain the change.

After the update, Laravel gives each user a fresh token every time they log in and replaces it when they log out. Logging out then makes a stolen remember-me cookie useless.

Laravel 4 stopped getting fixes long ago, so plan a move to a supported version.

Check your app with an agent

Paste this into a coding agent that can read your project, such as Claude Code, Codex or Amp. It checks your composer.lock against the versions above and tells you what to update, without changing anything.

Check whether the PHP project you have access to is affected by this security advisory, and tell me what to update. Do a read-only check: don't edit files, don't run composer update or composer require, and don't try to reproduce the flaw.

Advisory: Laravel 4 Remember-Me Cookies Stay Valid After the User Logs Out (GHSA-p62r-7637-3wwc)
Details: https://phpnews.net/security/laravel/ghsa-p62r-7637-3wwc

Affected versions, as Composer constraints:
- laravel/framework: >=4.0.0,<4.1.26

Fixed releases:
- 4.0.0 – 4.1.25: update to 4.1.26

1. Find every composer.lock in the project outside vendor/ (a monorepo can have one per app) and read the installed version of each package above. Packages installed as dependencies of other packages count too.
2. Compare each installed version with its constraint: "|" separates alternative ranges, and "," means both bounds apply.
3. For each affected install, read "What this means" at https://phpnews.net/security/laravel/ghsa-p62r-7637-3wwc and check whether the project meets the conditions it describes (a feature in use, a config value, a driver). Say which conditions you could check and which you couldn't.
4. Report a table: lock file | package | installed version | affected (yes, no or unknown) | conditions met (yes, no or unknown) | update to | evidence. For each affected package, give the command that would fix it, without running it: composer update <package> --with-dependencies when it is only installed as a dependency of another package, or composer require with the fixed version when composer.json requires it directly. If the installed version is on a branch with no fixed release listed, say it needs a move to a newer branch.

Sources

GitHub advisory GHSA-p62r-7637-3wwc →

← All Laravel advisories