CVE-2026-65631: erlang-jose RSA JWK parsing attempts to factor an attacker-controlled modulus, enabling CPU-exhaustion denial of service

Published Oct 26, 2026
·
Updated

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 josejwk:frombinary/1 or josejwk:frommap/1 API (or the Elixir wrappers JOSE.JWK.frombinary/1 and JOSE.JWK.frommap/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 convertsfmtocrt/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 convertsfmtocrtfindp/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.

Affected Software

1 affected component
hex/jose>=1.7.7<1.11.13

Remediation

Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.

  1. Upgrade

    Upgrade jose to a version that resolves this vulnerability.

    Fixed in 1.11.13

Event History

Oct 26, 2026
CVE Published
via MITRE·07:53 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·07:53 PM
DescriptionWeakness

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