# CVE-2026-80179: Jwcrypto: jwcrypto: denial of service via malformed jwe tokens

> A remote attacker can cause a denial of service in applications using jwcrypto by sending malformed JWE tokens that trigger excessive memory allocation.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.9 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 27 Aug 2026
- **Updated:** 9 Sep 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-98337, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-80179, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-80179

## What is CVE-2026-80179?

CVE-2026-80179 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2, published on 27 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A flaw was found in jwcrypto. A remote attacker can send a specially crafted JSON Web Encryption (JWE) token containing numerous period delimiters. This malformed token can force the JWE.deserialize() function to allocate excessive memory, leading to a MemoryError. This issue results in a denial of service (DoS) for services that process untrusted JWE values.

Weakness: CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-80179?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-80179?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2026-80179 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-80179 exists.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-80179 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-80179 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2, published on 27 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-80179 exists.

Affected product: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-80179/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-80179/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-80179
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-80179
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-80179

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From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-80179/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.