CVE-2022-23541 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5) Improper Authentication vulnerability in jsonwebtoken. A fix is available for jsonwebtoken — see the affected versions and patch details below.
jsonwebtoken's insecure implementation of key retrieval function could lead to Forgeable Public/Private Tokens from RSA to HMAC
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-23541.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-23541 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
jsonwebtokennpmDescription
Overview
Versions <=8.5.1 of jsonwebtoken library can be misconfigured so that passing a poorly implemented key retrieval function (referring to the secretOrPublicKey argument from the readme link) will result in incorrect verification of tokens. There is a possibility of using a different algorithm and key combination in verification than the one that was used to sign the tokens. Specifically, tokens signed with an asymmetric public key could be verified with a symmetric HS256 algorithm. This can lead to successful validation of forged tokens.
Am I affected?
You will be affected if your application is supporting usage of both symmetric key and asymmetric key in jwt.verify() implementation with the same key retrieval function.
How do I fix it?
Update to version 9.0.0.
Will the fix impact my users?
There is no impact for end users
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | jsonwebtoken | all versions | 9.0.0npm install jsonwebtoken@9.0.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for jsonwebtoken, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update jsonwebtoken to 9.0.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-23541 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-23541 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-23541. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| RHODF-4.13-RHEL-9 | odf4/mcg-core-rhel9:v4.13.0-41 | RHSA-2023:3742 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-23541 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-23541 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.