JOSE up to 1.28.1/2.0.5/3.20.3/4.9.1 alg resource consumption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in JOSE up to 1.28.1/2.0.5/3.20.3/4.9.1. It has been declared as problematic. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality. Such manipulation of the argument alg leads to resource consumption. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2022-36083. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in JOSE up to 1.28.1/2.0.5/3.20.3/4.9.1. It has been rated as problematic. Affected by this issue is some unknown processing. The manipulation of the argument alg with an unknown input leads to a resource consumption vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-400. The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. Impacted is availability. CVE summarizes:

JOSE is "JSON Web Almost Everything" - JWA, JWS, JWE, JWT, JWK, JWKS with no dependencies using runtime's native crypto in Node.js, Browser, Cloudflare Workers, Electron, and Deno. The PBKDF2-based JWE key management algorithms expect a JOSE Header Parameter named `p2c` PBES2 Count, which determines how many PBKDF2 iterations must be executed in order to derive a CEK wrapping key. The purpose of this parameter is to intentionally slow down the key derivation function in order to make password brute-force and dictionary attacks more expensive. This makes the PBES2 algorithms unsuitable for situations where the JWE is coming from an untrusted source: an adversary can intentionally pick an extremely high PBES2 Count value, that will initiate a CPU-bound computation that may take an unreasonable amount of time to finish. Under certain conditions, it is possible to have the user's environment consume unreasonable amount of CPU time. The impact is limited only to users utilizing the JWE decryption APIs with symmetric secrets to decrypt JWEs from untrusted parties who do not limit the accepted JWE Key Management Algorithms (`alg` Header Parameter) using the `keyManagementAlgorithms` (or `algorithms` in v1.x) decryption option or through other means. The `v1.28.2`, `v2.0.6`, `v3.20.4`, and `v4.9.2` releases limit the maximum PBKDF2 iteration count to `10000` by default. It is possible to adjust this limit with a newly introduced `maxPBES2Count` decryption option. If users are unable to upgrade their required library version, they have two options depending on whether they expect to receive JWEs using any of the three PBKDF2-based JWE key management algorithms. They can use the `keyManagementAlgorithms` decryption option to disable accepting PBKDF2 altogether, or they can inspect the JOSE Header prior to using the decryption API and limit the PBKDF2 iteration count (`p2c` Header Parameter).

The weakness was presented 09/08/2022 as GHSA-jv3g-j58f-9mq9. The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2022-36083 since 07/15/2022. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1499.

Upgrading to version 1.28.2, 2.0.6, 3.20.4 or 4.9.2 eliminates this vulnerability. The upgrade is hosted for download at github.com. Applying the patch 03d6d013bf6e070e85adfe5731f526978e3e8e4d is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Productinfo

Name

• JOSE

Version

• 1.28.0
• 1.28.1
• 2.0.0
• 2.0.1
• 2.0.2
• 2.0.3
• 2.0.4
• 2.0.5
• 3.20.0
• 3.20.1
• 3.20.2
• 3.20.3
• 4.9.0
• 4.9.1

License

• open-source

CPE 2.3info

• 🔍
• 🔍
• 🔍

CPE 2.2info

• 🔍
• 🔍
• 🔍

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Discussion