CVE-2026-65629 Weak PBKDF2 parameters for password-encrypted private-key export in jose
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-65629?
CVE-2026-65629 is a high-severity vulnerability in potatosalad jose, published on 26 Oct 2026.
Official description
Use of Password Hash With Insufficient Computational Effort in the jose library allows an attacker who obtains a password-encrypted private-key export to recover the private key through an offline password-cracking attack.
When jose exports a password-encrypted private key with jose_jwk:to_der/2 (JOSE.JWK.to_der/2), the jose_jwk_der:to_binary/3 function in src/jwk/jose_jwk_der.erl serializes the key as a PKCS#8 EncryptedPrivateKeyInfo using the PBES2 scheme with hardcoded key-derivation parameters: PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 with an iteration count of 2048 and an 8-byte (64-bit) random salt. Neither value can be overridden by the caller.
Both values are far below current guidance (OWASP recommends on the order of 600,000 iterations for PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256, and NIST recommends salts of at least 128 bits), so the key-stretching work factor is roughly 300 times lower than intended and the short salt reduces the cost of precomputation across keys. The symmetric encryption (AES-256-CBC with a 16-byte random IV) is not affected; the weakness is entirely in the derivation strength. An attacker who obtains one of these exported blobs (for example from a backup, configuration repository, object storage, or logs) can mount a cheap offline dictionary or brute-force attack against the export password, and success yields the full private key.
This issue affects jose: from 1.10.0 before 1.11.13.
Weakness: CWE-916
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-65629?
1 open source package ship an affected version, including jose.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
jose Hex | From 1.10.0 | 1.11.13 |
How do I fix CVE-2026-65629?
Upgrade jose to 1.11.13 or later.
Is CVE-2026-65629 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-65629 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-65629, EEF-CVE-2026-65629, GHSA-h4gx-8jq2-mfhc, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-65629.