CVE-2017-11424
HIGHCVE-2017-11424 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability in pyjwt. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2017-11424 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
PyJWT vulnerable to key confusion attacks
Blast Radius
pyjwtReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In PyJWT 1.5.0 and below the invalid_strings check in HMACAlgorithm.prepare_key does not account for all PEM encoded public keys. Specifically, the PKCS1 PEM encoded format would be allowed because it is prefaced with the string -----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY----- which is not accounted for. This enables symmetric/asymmetric key confusion attacks against users using the PKCS1 PEM encoded public keys, which would allow an attacker to craft JWTs from scratch.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | pyjwt | all versions | 1.5.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pyjwt. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update pyjwt to 1.5.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2017-11424 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2017-11424 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2017-11424. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2017-11424 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2017-11424 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.