CVE-2026-40164
Public on 2026-04-14
Modified on 2026-04-15
Description
jq is a command-line JSON processor. Before commit 0c7d133c3c7e37c00b6d46b658a02244fdd3c784, jq used MurmurHash3 with a hardcoded, publicly visible seed (0x432A9843) for all JSON object hash table operations, which allowed an attacker to precompute key collisions offline. By supplying a crafted JSON object (~100 KB) where all keys hashed to the same bucket, hash table lookups degraded from O(1) to O(n), turning any jq expression into an O(n²) operation and causing significant CPU exhaustion. This affected common jq use cases such as CI/CD pipelines, web services, and data processing scripts, and was far more practical to exploit than existing heap overflow issues since it required only a small payload. This issue has been patched in commit 0c7d133c3c7e37c00b6d46b658a02244fdd3c784.
Severity
See what this means
CVSS v3 Base Score
See breakdown
Affected Packages
| Platform | Package | Release Date | Advisory | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Linux 2 - Core | jq | Pending Fix | ||
| Amazon Linux 2023 | jq | Pending Fix |
CVSS Scores
| Score Type | Score | Vector | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Linux | CVSSv3 | 5.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |