CVE-2026-27932
In 1.6.2 and earlier, a resource exhaustion vulnerability in joserfc allows an unauthenticated attacker to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) via CPU exhaustion.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.44%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
joserfc is a Python library that provides an implementation of several JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) standards. In 1.6.2 and earlier, a resource exhaustion vulnerability in joserfc allows an unauthenticated attacker to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) via CPU exhaustion. When the library decrypts a JSON Web Encryption (JWE) token using Password-Based Encryption (PBES2) algorithms, it reads the p2c (PBES2 Count) parameter directly from the token's protected header. This parameter defines the number of iterations for the PBKDF2 key derivation function. Because joserfc does not validate or bound this value, an attacker can specify an extremely large iteration count (e.g., 2^31 - 1), forcing the server to expend massive CPU resources processing a single token. This vulnerability exists at the JWA layer and impacts all high-level JWE and JWT decryption interfaces if PBES2 algorithms are allowed by the application's policy.
- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- EPSS
- 0.44% probability · 38th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-770
- Affected
- hsiaoming/joserfc
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
EPSS 0.4% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- https://github.com/authlib/joserfc/commit/696a9611ab982c45ee2190ed79ca8e1d8e09398fPatch
- https://github.com/authlib/joserfc/security/advisories/GHSA-w5r5-m38g-f9f9Exploit, Mitigation, Vendor Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.