CVE-2025-53864 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.8) CWE-674 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.
Nimbus JOSE + JWT is vulnerable to DoS attacks when processing deeply nested JSON
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.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-53864.
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
com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt☕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
Connect2id Nimbus JOSE + JWT 10.0.x before 10.0.2 and 9.37.x before 9.37.4 allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service via a deeply nested JSON object supplied in a JWT claim set, because of uncontrolled recursion. NOTE: this is independent of the Gson 2.11.0 issue because the Connect2id product could have checked the JSON object nesting depth, regardless of what limits (if any) were imposed by Gson.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt | ≥ 9.38-rc1&&< 10.0.2 | 10.0.2com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt:10.0.2 |
| ☕Maven | com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt | all versions | 9.37.4com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt:9.37.4 |
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 10.0.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-53864 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.
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.
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2025-53864 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-53864 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.