CVE-2026-48525

Description

A flaw was found in PyJWT. A remote attacker can exploit this by supplying an arbitrarily large Base64URL payload segment when verifying detached JSON Web Signature (JWS) tokens using the unencoded-payload option. This forces excessive CPU work and memory allocations, leading to a Denial of Service (DoS) against any endpoint verifying such tokens.

Statement

Moderate: This flaw in PyJWT, a dependency across multiple Red Hat products, allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to trigger a Denial of Service. By submitting a specially crafted JSON Web Signature (JWS) token with an oversized unencoded payload, an attacker can force excessive CPU and memory consumption on systems verifying these tokens, leading to service disruption.

Mitigation

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score5.3N/A5.3
Attack VectorNetworkN/ANetwork
Attack ComplexityLowN/ALow
Privileges RequiredNoneN/ANone
User InteractionNoneN/ANone
ScopeUnchangedN/AUnchanged
ConfidentialityNoneN/ANone
Integrity ImpactNoneN/ANone
Availability ImpactLowN/ALow

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

When allocating resources without limits, an attacker could prevent other systems, applications, or processes from accessing the same type of resource. It can be easy for an attacker to consume many resources by rapidly making many requests or causing larger resources to be used than is needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

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