erlang-jose RSA JWK parsing attempts to factor an attacker-controlled modulus, enabling CPU-exhaustion denial of service
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 1.11.13
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
Summary
The erlang-jose library (used in Erlang and Elixir applications, including through the JOSE.JWK wrappers) is affected when it parses untrusted RSA JSON Web Keys. An unauthenticated remote attacker can send a crafted key that makes the server spend excessive CPU time trying to factor the modulus, which can exhaust processing resources and cause a denial of service.
Summarized by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Verify details against the original sources.
Read the original description
Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity in erlang-jose allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to cause a CPU-exhaustion denial of service by submitting a crafted RSA JSON Web Key. When an application parses an untrusted JWK through the public jose_jwk:from_binary/1 or jose_jwk:from_map/1 API (or the Elixir wrappers JOSE.JWK.from_binary/1 and JOSE.JWK.from_map/1), an RSA private key that supplies d, e, and n but omits all Chinese Remainder Theorem parameters (p, q, dp, dq, qi) is routed into convert_sfm_to_crt/1, which tries to recover the missing primes by factoring the modulus. The three integers are read straight from the base64url input and are never validated as a real RSA key. When the modulus cannot be split into two factors (for example, when it is itself prime), the search loop convert_sfm_to_crt_find_p/6 performs a modular exponentiation over the attacker-sized modulus on every iteration and never succeeds. A single request of a few hundred bytes forces close to one CPU-second of work before an internal one-second watchdog kills the worker, and a larger modulus raises the cost further. By flooding such requests an attacker can saturate every scheduler and deny service, without credentials, a valid RSA key, or any special configuration. This issue affects jose: from 1.7.7 before 1.11.13.
Timeline
- CVE published
- First seen by cve.now
Affected versions
- jose
From 1.7.7 · fixed in 1.11.13
- potatosalad/erlang-jose
From d19e1ba68d88c68d29aa942be2573a22dbafca1f · fixed in bfd336c0062bff93e65d08c22361897e96afd956
- joseHex
From 1.7.7 · fixed in 1.11.13