CVE-2026-65627
Decompression bomb via unbounded zlib:inflate in jose_jwe_zip:uncompress/2
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- EEF
Description
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in potatosalad jose (erlang-jose) allows a remote attacker to exhaust a node's memory with a small crafted JWE token. The jose_jwe_zip:uncompress/2 function in src/jwe/jose_jwe_zip.erl decompresses the DEFLATE-compressed plaintext of a JWE that carries the optional zip: DEF header by calling zlib:inflate/2 on the entire attacker-controlled stream, with no bound on the output size or the inflation ratio. Raw DEFLATE reaches ratios around 1000:1 on highly repetitive input, so a few-kilobyte token inflates to hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes in a single call. Decompression runs automatically during decryption through jose_jwe:block_decrypt/2 (JOSE.JWE.block_decrypt/2 in Elixir), before the recipient can inspect or reject the payload. With the common asymmetric key-management algorithms (RSA-OAEP, ECDH-ES) an attacker needs only the recipient's public key to craft such a token, so no authentication or secret material is required. A single small token can exhaust the node's memory and crash the BEAM, denying service to all users. This issue affects jose: from 1.0.0 before 1.11.13.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| EEFCNA (assigner) | 4.0 | Medium6.9 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
| NVDNVD · Deferred | 4.0 | Medium6.9 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.25% · top 84% of all CVEs (6 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 6.9.
Weakness
Affected products
- affected 1.0.0 – < 1.11.13
- affected a7746ecd4950f85a393136e449a91dac62b5c429 – < 857eb8e7f2d33e2c9ca2189e77226561cacaf2ad
What to do
Workaround: Reject JWE tokens that carry a zip header before passing them to jose_jwe:block_decrypt/2. DEFLATE compression is rarely used in legitimate JWE traffic, so untrusted tokens whose protected header contains zip: DEF can be inspected and filtered out before decryption.
References (5)
- https://github.com/potatosalad/erlang-jose/security/advisories/GHSA-wfpv-qxp8-x5gm (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryrelatedexploit
- EEF CNA record for CVE-2026-65627 (opens in a new tab)related
- OSV record EEF-CVE-2026-65627 (opens in a new tab)related
- Introducing commit a7746ec in potatosalad/erlang-jose (opens in a new tab)related
- Fix commit 857eb8e in potatosalad/erlang-jose (opens in a new tab)patch
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2026-65627)Record last updated .