CVE-2021-29443

MEDIUM

jose 1.0.0-1.28.0 - Padding Oracle via AES_CBC_HMAC_SHA2 Decryption

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

jose is an npm library providing a number of cryptographic operations. In vulnerable versions AES_CBC_HMAC_SHA2 Algorithm (A128CBC-HS256, A192CBC-HS384, A256CBC-HS512) decryption would always execute both HMAC tag verification and CBC decryption, if either failed `JWEDecryptionFailed` would be thrown. A possibly observable difference in timing when padding error would occur while decrypting the ciphertext makes a padding oracle and an adversary might be able to make use of that oracle to decrypt data without knowing the decryption key by issuing on average 128*b calls to the padding oracle (where b is the number of bytes in the ciphertext block). All major release versions have had a patch released which ensures the HMAC tag is verified before performing CBC decryption. The fixed versions are `^1.28.1 || ^2.0.5 || >=3.11.4`. Users should upgrade their v1.x dependency to ^1.28.1, their v2.x dependency to ^2.0.5, and their v3.x dependency to ^3.11.4. Thanks to Jason from Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR) for bringing this up and Eva Sarafianou (@esarafianou) for helping to score this advisory.

References (2)

Core 2
Core References
Patch, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_confirm
https://github.com/panva/jose/security/advisories/GHSA-58f5-hfqc-jgch
Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://www.npmjs.com/package/jose

Scores

CVSS v3 5.9
EPSS 0.0117
EPSS Percentile 63.2%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Details

CWE
CWE-203
Status published
Products (2)
jose_project/jose 1.0.0 - 1.28.1
npm/jose 1.0.0 - 1.28.1npm
Published Apr 16, 2021
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026