CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-36083

Excessive Iteration

Published: Sep 07, 2022 | Modified: Jul 21, 2023
CVSS 3.x
5.3
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

JOSE is JSON Web Almost Everything - JWA, JWS, JWE, JWT, JWK, JWKS with no dependencies using runtimes native crypto in Node.js, Browser, Cloudflare Workers, Electron, and Deno. The PBKDF2-based JWE key management algorithms expect a JOSE Header Parameter named p2c PBES2 Count, which determines how many PBKDF2 iterations must be executed in order to derive a CEK wrapping key. The purpose of this parameter is to intentionally slow down the key derivation function in order to make password brute-force and dictionary attacks more expensive. This makes the PBES2 algorithms unsuitable for situations where the JWE is coming from an untrusted source: an adversary can intentionally pick an extremely high PBES2 Count value, that will initiate a CPU-bound computation that may take an unreasonable amount of time to finish. Under certain conditions, it is possible to have the users environment consume unreasonable amount of CPU time. The impact is limited only to users utilizing the JWE decryption APIs with symmetric secrets to decrypt JWEs from untrusted parties who do not limit the accepted JWE Key Management Algorithms (alg Header Parameter) using the keyManagementAlgorithms (or algorithms in v1.x) decryption option or through other means. The v1.28.2, v2.0.6, v3.20.4, and v4.9.2 releases limit the maximum PBKDF2 iteration count to 10000 by default. It is possible to adjust this limit with a newly introduced maxPBES2Count decryption option. If users are unable to upgrade their required library version, they have two options depending on whether they expect to receive JWEs using any of the three PBKDF2-based JWE key management algorithms. They can use the keyManagementAlgorithms decryption option to disable accepting PBKDF2 altogether, or they can inspect the JOSE Header prior to using the decryption API and limit the PBKDF2 iteration count (p2c Header Parameter).

Weakness

The product performs an iteration or loop without sufficiently limiting the number of times that the loop is executed.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Jose Jose_project 1.0.0 (including) 1.28.2 (excluding)
Jose Jose_project 2.0.0 (including) 2.0.6 (excluding)
Jose Jose_project 3.0.0 (including) 3.20.4 (excluding)
Jose Jose_project 4.0.0 (including) 4.9.2 (excluding)
Jose Ubuntu kinetic *
Jose Ubuntu lunar *
Jose Ubuntu mantic *
Jose Ubuntu trusty *
Jose Ubuntu xenial *
Node-jose Ubuntu esm-apps/jammy *
Node-jose Ubuntu jammy *
Node-jose Ubuntu trusty *
Node-jose Ubuntu upstream *
Node-jose Ubuntu xenial *

References