CVE-2026-40164

7.5 HIGH
Published: April 14, 2026 Modified: April 14, 2026
View on NVD

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.

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CVSS v3.x Details

0.0 Low Medium High Critical 10.0
Vector String
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

Patch Vendor Advisory Exploit Third Party Advisory

2 reference(s) from NVD

Quick Stats

CVSS v3 Score
7.5 / 10.0
Exploitation Status
Not in CISA KEV

Weaknesses (CWE)