GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q 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.
jose vulnerable to resource exhaustion via specifically crafted JWE with compressed plaintext
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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 GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q.
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
GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q 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 379,145 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
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
josenpmjose-node-cjs-runtimenpmjose-node-esm-runtimenpmDescription
A vulnerability has been identified in the JSON Web Encryption (JWE) decryption interfaces, specifically related to the support for decompressing plaintext after its decryption. This allows an adversary to exploit specific scenarios where the compression ratio becomes exceptionally high. As a result, the length of the JWE token, which is determined by the compressed content's size, can land below application-defined limits. In such cases, other existing application level mechanisms for preventing resource exhaustion may be rendered ineffective.
Note that as per RFC 8725 compression of data SHOULD NOT be done before encryption, because such compressed data often reveals information about the plaintext. For this reason the v5.x major version of jose removed support for compressed payloads entirely and is therefore NOT affected by this advisory.
Impact
Under certain conditions it is possible to have the user's environment consume unreasonable amount of CPU time or memory during JWE Decryption operations.
Affected users
The impact is limited only to Node.js users utilizing the JWE decryption APIs to decrypt JWEs from untrusted sources.
You are NOT affected if any of the following applies to you
- Your code uses jose version v5.x where JWE Compression is not supported anymore
- Your code runs in an environment other than Node.js (e.g. Deno, CF Workers), which is the only runtime where JWE Compression is implemented out of the box
- Your code does not use the JWE decryption APIs
- Your code only accepts JWEs produced by trusted sources
Patches
v2.0.7 and v4.15.5 releases limit the decompression routine to only allow decompressing up to 250 kB of plaintext. In v4.x it is possible to further adjust this limit via the inflateRaw decryption option implementation. In v2.x it is possible to further adjust this limit via the inflateRawSyncLimit decryption option.
Workarounds
If you cannot upgrade and do not want to support compressed JWEs you may detect and reject these tokens early by checking the token's protected header
const { zip } = jose.decodeProtectedHeader(token)
if (zip !== undefined) {
throw new Error('JWE Compression is not supported')
}
If you wish to continue supporting JWEs with compressed payloads in these legacy release lines you must upgrade (v1.x and v2.x to version v2.0.7, v3.x and v4.x to version v4.15.5) and review the limits put forth by the patched releases.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory please open a discussion in the project's repository
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | jose | ≥ 3.0.0&&< 4.15.5 | 4.15.5npm install jose@4.15.5 |
| 📦npm | jose-node-cjs-runtime | all versions | 4.15.5npm install jose-node-cjs-runtime@4.15.5 |
| 📦npm | jose-node-esm-runtime | all versions | 4.15.5npm install jose-node-esm-runtime@4.15.5 |
| 📦npm | jose | all versions | 2.0.7npm install jose@2.0.7 |
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 4.15.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q 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 GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.4 for RHEL 8 | multicluster-engine/console-mce-rhel8:v2.4.5-25 | RHBA-2024:3555 |
| multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.5 for RHEL 9 | multicluster-engine/console-mce-rhel9:v2.5.2-6 | RHBA-2024:1775 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.10 for RHEL 9 | rhacm2/console-rhel9:v2.10.1-3 | RHBA-2024:1793 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.9 for RHEL 8 | rhacm2/console-rhel8:v2.9.4-22 | RHBA-2024:3593 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 7.1 | rhceph/ceph-nvmeof-cli-rhel9:1.2.19-1 | RHBA-2025:1772 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | container-tools:rhel8-8100020240610105040.afee755d | RHSA-2024:3968 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | jose-0:10-2.el8_10.3 | RHSA-2024:5294 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | podman-4:4.9.4-4.el9_4 | RHSA-2024:3826 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-hhhv-q57g-882q across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.