Bug 2533849 (CVE-2026-92091)

Summary: CVE-2026-92091 jwcrypto: jwcrypto: denial of service via O(n^2) duplicate check on unbounded JWK key_ops array
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: aprice, aruklets, doconnor, dschmidt, eglynn, jjoyce, jlanda, jpretori, jsamir, jschluet, jwong, kshier, lhh, mburns, mgarciac, oezr, omaciel, rhel-process-autobot, security-response-team, simaishi, stcannon, teagle, ttakamiy, watson-tool-maintainers, yguenane
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in jwcrypto. The JWK.import_key() function validates the key_ops JWK member for duplicate values using an algorithm with O(n^2) time complexity, and the length of key_ops is not bounded. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can supply a JWK with a large key_ops array to an application that passes attacker-controlled key material to a public key-import API (reachable via ECDH-ES key agreement, OIDC dynamic client registration, DPoP, or ACME account key registration, among others) to consume excessive CPU time, resulting in a denial of service.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Bug Depends On: 2535012    
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-15 14:37:36 UTC
A flaw was found in jwcrypto. JWK.import_key() validates the key_ops JWK member for duplicate values using a nested loop that rescans the entire list for every element, resulting in O(n^2) time complexity relative to the length of key_ops. The key_ops array has no size limit and is fully attacker-controlled when an application passes attacker-supplied JWK material into this API. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can trigger this by supplying a JWK such as {\"kty\":\"oct\",\"k\":\"AAAA\",\"key_ops\":[...]} containing a large key_ops array (e.g. 50,000 distinct strings, ~526 KB) to any application code path that imports an attacker-supplied JWK or JWK Set, including ECDH-ES key agreement (the epk header is processed before other token validation), OIDC dynamic client registration, DPoP proof validation, ACME account key registration, or relying parties importing a federated JWKS. Per the finder's measurements (not independently reproduced by Red Hat), a single such request consumes approximately 108 seconds of CPU time on one core, and a small number of concurrent requests can exhaust a server's processing capacity, resulting in denial of service. This does not affect deployments that only import JWKs from trusted, fixed issuer endpoints.