Description
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in potatosalad jose (erlang-jose) allows a remote attacker to exhaust a node's memory with a small crafted JWE token.

The jose_jwe_zip:uncompress/2 function in src/jwe/jose_jwe_zip.erl decompresses the DEFLATE-compressed plaintext of a JWE that carries the optional zip: DEF header by calling zlib:inflate/2 on the entire attacker-controlled stream, with no bound on the output size or the inflation ratio. Raw DEFLATE reaches ratios around 1000:1 on highly repetitive input, so a few-kilobyte token inflates to hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes in a single call.

Decompression runs automatically during decryption through jose_jwe:block_decrypt/2 (JOSE.JWE.block_decrypt/2 in Elixir), before the recipient can inspect or reject the payload. With the common asymmetric key-management algorithms (RSA-OAEP, ECDH-ES) an attacker needs only the recipient's public key to craft such a token, so no authentication or secret material is required. A single small token can exhaust the node's memory and crash the BEAM, denying service to all users.

This issue affects jose: from 1.0.0 before 1.11.13.
Published: 2026-10-26
Score: 6.9 Medium
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
AI Analysis

Analysis and contextual insights are available on OpenCVE Cloud.

Remediation

Vendor Workaround

Reject JWE tokens that carry a zip header before passing them to jose_jwe:block_decrypt/2. DEFLATE compression is rarely used in legitimate JWE traffic, so untrusted tokens whose protected header contains zip: DEF can be inspected and filtered out before decryption.

Tracking

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Advisories

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History

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in potatosalad jose (erlang-jose) allows a remote attacker to exhaust a node's memory with a small crafted JWE token. The jose_jwe_zip:uncompress/2 function in src/jwe/jose_jwe_zip.erl decompresses the DEFLATE-compressed plaintext of a JWE that carries the optional zip: DEF header by calling zlib:inflate/2 on the entire attacker-controlled stream, with no bound on the output size or the inflation ratio. Raw DEFLATE reaches ratios around 1000:1 on highly repetitive input, so a few-kilobyte token inflates to hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes in a single call. Decompression runs automatically during decryption through jose_jwe:block_decrypt/2 (JOSE.JWE.block_decrypt/2 in Elixir), before the recipient can inspect or reject the payload. With the common asymmetric key-management algorithms (RSA-OAEP, ECDH-ES) an attacker needs only the recipient's public key to craft such a token, so no authentication or secret material is required. A single small token can exhaust the node's memory and crash the BEAM, denying service to all users. This issue affects jose: from 1.0.0 before 1.11.13.
Title Decompression bomb via unbounded zlib:inflate in jose_jwe_zip:uncompress/2
First Time appeared Potatosalad
Potatosalad jose
Weaknesses CWE-409
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:potatosalad:jose:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Potatosalad
Potatosalad jose
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 6.9, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}


Subscriptions

Potatosalad Jose
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: EEF

Published:

Updated: 2026-10-26T19:53:16.336Z

Reserved: 2026-07-22T13:58:26.233Z

Link: CVE-2026-65627

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-10-26T20:17:58.290

Modified: 2026-10-26T20:17:58.290

Link: CVE-2026-65627

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses
  • CWE-409

    Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)