CVE-2025-48060

Description

A flaw was found in jq, a command line JSON processor. A specially crafted input can cause a heap-based buffer over-read when formatting an empty string because it was not properly null-terminated, causing a crash and resulting in a denial of service.

Statement

To exploit this flaw, an attacker needs to trick a user into processing a specially crafted JSON input, allowing an attacker to trigger a buffer over-read of 2 bytes and cause a crash in jq with no other security impact. Due to these reasons, this flaw has been rated with a Moderate severity.

Mitigation

Do not process untrusted input with the jq command line JSON processor.

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).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score5.57.5N/A
Attack VectorLocalNetworkN/A
Attack ComplexityLowLowN/A
Privileges RequiredNoneNoneN/A
User InteractionRequiredNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityNoneNoneN/A
Integrity ImpactNoneNoneN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

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

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Red Hat CVSS v3 Score Explanation

The jq program is a command line tool and it can only be exploited remotely via an application processing files uploaded by untrusted users, which is not the case of Red Hat products. Additionally, a user must process a specially crafted JSON file provided by an attacker to trigger this issue. Therefore, the attack vector metric is set to local and the user interaction metric is set to required.

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Read Memory

Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism

By reading out-of-bounds memory, an attacker might be able to get secret values, such as memory addresses, which can bypass protection mechanisms such as ASLR in order to improve the reliability and likelihood of exploiting a separate weakness to achieve code execution instead of just denial of service.

Availability,Integrity

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

An attacker might be able to cause a crash or other denial of service by causing the product to read a memory location that is not allowed (such as a segmentation fault), or to cause other conditions in which the read operation returns more data than is expected.

Frequently Asked Questions

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