Timing side-channel in pure-Erlang X25519 scalar multiplication leaks the private key in jose
Observable Timing Discrepancy vulnerability in potatosalad jose allows recovery of a long-term X25519 private key through a timing side channel in the pure-Erlang Curve25519 fallback.
The pure-Erlang X25519 implementation performs scalar multiplication over the secret private key using a recursive Montgomery ladder (jose_jwa_x25519:curve25519/2) whose clauses branch on individual bits of the clamped private scalar, and whose per-step operations (jose_jwa_x25519:montgomery_add/3 and jose_jwa_x25519:montgomery_double/1) and field inversion are built from value-dependent Erlang bignum arithmetic (multiplication, remainder, and modular exponenti
ECDSA signature length is not validated in jose, allowing signature malleability
The jose library accepts ECDSA (ES256, ES256K, ES384, and ES512) JWS signatures of a non-canonical length. When verifying an ECDSA signature, jose_jwk_kty_ec:verify/4 in src/jwk/jose_jwk_kty_ec.erl splits the raw signature in half by its actual byte length (split_binary(Signature, byte_size(Signature) div 2)) instead of enforcing the fixed length required by RFC 7518 §3.4, and then decodes each half with crypto:bytes_to_integer/1, which ignores leading zero bytes.
As a result, an attacker who holds one valid token can prepend leading zero bytes to each of the R and S halves to produce longer signatures that still split evenly and decode to t
erlang-jose RSA JWK parsing attempts to factor an attacker-controlled modulus, enabling CPU-exhaustion denial of service
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
Weak PBKDF2 parameters for password-encrypted private-key export in jose
Use of Password Hash With Insufficient Computational Effort in the jose library allows an attacker who obtains a password-encrypted private-key export to recover the private key through an offline password-cracking attack.
When jose exports a password-encrypted private key with jose_jwk:to_der/2 (JOSE.JWK.to_der/2), the jose_jwk_der:to_binary/3 function in src/jwk/jose_jwk_der.erl serializes the key as a PKCS#8 EncryptedPrivateKeyInfo using the PBES2 scheme with hardcoded key-derivation parameters: PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 with an iteration count of 2048 and an 8-byte (64-bit) random salt. Neither value can be overridden by the caller.
Both value
Infinite recursion (CPU denial-of-service) in JOSE.JWK.shared_secret/2 on mismatched key types
jose_jwk:shared_secret/2 (exposed in Elixir as JOSE.JWK.shared_secret/2) derives an ECDH shared secret from two JWKs. Its first function clause only matches when both JWKs carry the same key type (kty) module, and its fallback clause re-invokes itself as shared_secret(from(YourJWK), from(MyJWK)). Because from/1 returns an already-parsed jose_jwk record unchanged, passing two JWKs whose key types differ (for example an EC key and an RSA key) makes the fallback clause re-enter with identical arguments, producing an unbounded tail-recursive loop that never returns and never crashes.
An application that derives a shared secret from an externally
Decompression bomb via unbounded zlib:inflate in jose_jwe_zip:uncompress/2
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.
Deco
Bleichenbacher padding oracle in RSAES-PKCS1-v1_5 decryption in jose
The pure-Erlang RSAES-PKCS1-v1_5 decryption in the jose_jwa_pkcs1 module is a Bleichenbacher padding oracle. eme_pkcs1_decode/2 returns the recovered message when a decrypted block has valid PKCS#1 v1.5 padding (a leading 0x00 0x02, a padding string of at least eight non-zero bytes, and a 0x00 separator) and returns a distinct error result otherwise, and rsaes_pkcs1_decrypt/2 additionally returns {error, {badsize, _}} when the length check fails. The implementation applies no implicit-rejection countermeasure (RFC 8017 §7.2.2): it does not substitute a deterministic pseudo-random plaintext on a padding failure, so a one-bit padding-conformanc
Attacker-controlled AES-GCM authentication tag length allows tag forgery in jose
The pure-Erlang AES-GCM fallback in jose_jwa_aes derives the number of verified authentication tag bits from the attacker-supplied tag itself. In the {aes_gcm, Bits} clause of block_decrypt/4, the incoming tag is guarded only by is_binary/1, with no check on its length. Verification in gcm_block_decrypt/6 then computes TBits = bit_size(T) and compares only those bits of the real 128-bit tag. An attacker who controls a JWE token can truncate the authentication tag to as little as 8 bits, so only 8 bits are ever checked. This reduces forgery resistance from 2^-128 to 2^-8, and a forged ciphertext is reliably accepted as authentic within 256 att
JOSE vulnerable to resource exhaustion via specifically crafted JWE
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 s