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
Medium severity
Medium
See what this means
CVSS v3 Base Score
5.5
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