CVE-2022-23541 jsonwebtoken's insecure implementation of key retrieval function could lead to Forgeable Public/Private Tokens from RSA to HMAC

Q: Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-23541?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including jsonwebtoken. It affects 1 product.

Q: Is CVE-2022-23541 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-23541 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Q: How do I fix CVE-2022-23541?

Upgrade jsonwebtoken to 9.0.0 or later.

Medium 5.0 Published 22 Dec 2022 Updated 13 Feb 2025

Attackers can forge tokens by exploiting insecure key retrieval logic, bypassing authentication in applications using jsonwebtoken.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2022-23541?

CVE-2022-23541 is a medium-severity authentication bypass vulnerability in auth0 node-jsonwebtoken, published on 22 Dec 2022. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

jsonwebtoken is an implementation of JSON Web Tokens. Versions `<= 8.5.1` of `jsonwebtoken` library can be misconfigured so that passing a poorly implemented key retrieval function referring to the `secretOrPublicKey` argument from the readme link will result in incorrect verification of tokens. There is a possibility of using a different algorithm and key combination in verification, other than the one that was used to sign the tokens. Specifically, tokens signed with an asymmetric public key could be verified with a symmetric HS256 algorithm. This can lead to successful validation of forged tokens. If your application is supporting usage of both symmetric key and asymmetric key in jwt.verify() implementation with the same key retrieval function. This issue has been patched, please update to version 9.0.0.

Weakness: CWE-287, CWE-1259

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-23541?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including jsonwebtoken. It affects 1 product.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`jsonwebtoken` npm	All versions	`9.0.0`
`jsonwebtoken` npm	All versions	`9.0.0`

Products include Auth0 Jsonwebtoken.

How do I fix CVE-2022-23541?

Upgrade jsonwebtoken to 9.0.0 or later.

Upgrade, and rotate credentials and sessions that may have been exposed. More about Authentication bypass.

Is CVE-2022-23541 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-23541 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-hjrf-2m68-5959, ROOT-APP-NPM-CVE-2022-23541.