CVE-2023-50966 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in jose. A fix is available for jose — see the affected versions and patch details below.
erlang-jose vulnerable to denial of service via large p2c value
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-50966.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
joseReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Hex packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
erlang-jose (aka JOSE for Erlang and Elixir) through 1.11.6 allow attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a large p2c (aka PBES2 Count) value in a JOSE header.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💧Hex | jose | all versions | 1.11.7mix deps.update jose |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for jose, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update jose to 1.11.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-50966 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-50966 in your dependencies?
Find it across Hex, including transitive dependencies.