CVE-2024-51744
LOWBad documentation of error handling in ParseWithClaims can lead to potentially dangerous situations in golang-jwt
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.
Blast Radius
github.com/golang-jwt/jwt/v4Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
golang-jwt is a Go implementation of JSON Web Tokens. Unclear documentation of the error behavior in ParseWithClaims can lead to situation where users are potentially not checking errors in the way they should be. Especially, if a token is both expired and invalid, the errors returned by ParseWithClaims return both error codes. If users only check for the jwt.ErrTokenExpired using error.Is, they will ignore the embedded jwt.ErrTokenSignatureInvalid and thus potentially accept invalid tokens. A fix has been back-ported with the error handling logic from the v5 branch to the v4 branch. In this logic, the ParseWithClaims function will immediately return in "dangerous" situations (e.g., an invalid signature), limiting the combined errors only to situations where the signature is valid, but further validation failed (e.g., if the signature is valid, but is expired AND has the wrong audience). This fix is part of the 4.5.1 release. We are aware that this changes the behaviour of an established function and is not 100 % backwards compatible, so updating to 4.5.1 might break your code. In case you cannot update to 4.5.0, please make sure that you are properly checking for all errors ("dangerous" ones first), so that you are not running in the case detailed above.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/golang-jwt/jwt/v4 | all versions | 4.5.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/golang-jwt/jwt/v4. 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 github.com/golang-jwt/jwt/v4 to 4.5.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-51744 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-2024-51744 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-2024-51744. 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-2024-51744 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2024-51744 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.