CVE-2026-53938
Received
Received - Intake
Heap Buffer Overflow in cjose JWE Decryption
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-53938, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-09-09
Last updated on: 2026-09-09
Assigner: GitHub, Inc.
Description
Description
OpenIDC/cjose is a C library implementing the Javascript Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE). Prior to version 0.6.2.5, cjose's JWE decryption path for the AES Key Wrap key-management algorithms (`alg` = `A128KW`, `A192KW`, `A256KW`) does not validate the length of the attacker-supplied `encrypted_key` (JWE Encrypted Key) before unwrapping it into a fixed-size, heap-allocated Content Encryption Key (CEK) buffer. A remote, unauthenticated attacker who can submit a crafted JWE to an application that decrypts it with an AES-KW symmetric key can trigger an out-of-bounds heap write, corrupting the heap. This leads at minimum to a crash (denial of service) and, depending on the heap layout and allocator, may be leverageable for further memory-corruption impact. `cjose_jwe_import()` / `cjose_jwe_decrypt()` are pre-authentication entry points: they parse and process fully attacker-controlled input. Upgrade to cjose 0.6.2.5 to receive a patch. If upgrading is not immediately possible, reject the AES Key Wrap algorithms (`A128KW`/`A192KW`/`A256KW`) for untrusted JWEs at the application layer.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| openidc | cjose | to 0.6.2.5 (exc) |
| openidc | cjose | 0.6.2.5 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-787 | The product writes data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer. |
| CWE-122 | A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc(). |
