CVE-2023-52428 — nimbus-jose-jwt
HIGHCVE-2023-52428 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt. A fix is available for com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Denial of Service in Connect2id Nimbus JOSE+JWT
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-2023-52428.
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-2023-52428 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 378,567 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
com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwtReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In Connect2id Nimbus JOSE+JWT before 9.37.2, an attacker can cause a denial of service (resource consumption) via a large JWE p2c header value (aka iteration count) for the PasswordBasedDecrypter (PBKDF2) component.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt | all versions | 9.37.2com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt:9.37.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt to 9.37.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-52428 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-2023-52428 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-52428. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat build of Apache Camel 3.20.7 for Spring Boot | nimbus-jose-jwt | RHSA-2024:6883 |
| Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.4.3 for Spring Boot | nimbus-jose-jwt | RHSA-2024:8064 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8 | nimbus-jose-jwt | RHSA-2024:8826 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8.0 for RHEL 8 | eap8-activemq-artemis-0:2.33.0-1.redhat_00015.1.el8eap | RHSA-2024:8823 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8.0 for RHEL 9 | eap8-activemq-artemis-0:2.33.0-1.redhat_00015.1.el9eap | RHSA-2024:8824 |
| Streams for Apache Kafka 2.9.0 | see advisory | RHSA-2025:2416 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-52428 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-52428 across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.