CVE-2025-54887 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) CWE-354 vulnerability in jwe. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2025-54887 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
jwe: Missing AES-GCM authentication tag validation in encrypted JWEs
Real-World Exposure
jweReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
jwe is a Ruby implementation of the RFC 7516 JSON Web Encryption (JWE) standard. In versions 1.1.0 and below, authentication tags of encrypted JWEs can be brute forced, which may result in loss of confidentiality for those JWEs and provide ways to craft arbitrary JWEs. This puts users at risk because JWEs can be modified to decrypt to an arbitrary value, decrypted by observing parsing differences and the GCM internal GHASH key can be recovered. Users are affected by this vulnerability even if they do not use an AES-GCM encryption algorithm for their JWEs. As the GHASH key may have been leaked, users must rotate the encryption keys after upgrading. This issue is fixed in version 1.1.1.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | jwe | all versions | 1.1.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for jwe. 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 jwe to 1.1.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-54887 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-2025-54887 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-2025-54887. 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-2025-54887 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2025-54887 across RubyGems dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.