PYSEC-2026-4145: PyJWT: Asymmetric-PEM detection bypass: whitespace/line-ending-mutated public keys skip the HS/asymmetric confusion guard

PyJWT is a Python implementation of JSON Web Token standards. Prior to 2.14.0, ispemformat in jwt/utils.py is affected because ispemformat does not recognize every PEM representation accepted by the cryptography loader. This occurs when an application mixes HMAC and asymmetric algorithms and supplies a mutated public-key PEM as raw key bytes. As a result, HMACAlgorithm.preparekey treats the unrecognized asymmetric public key as an HMAC secret. Consequently, an attacker who knows the public key can forge authenticated HMAC tokens. This issue is fixed in version 2.14.0.