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.
CVSS Metrics
- Vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Attack Vector
- network
- Complexity
- low
- Privileges
- none
- User Action
- none
- Scope
- unchanged
- Confidentiality
- none
- Integrity
- none
- Availability
- high
- Weaknesses
- CWE-328CWE-407
Metadata
- Primary Vendor
- UNKNOWN
- Published
- 4/14/2026
- Last Modified
- 4/14/2026
- Source
- NIST NVD
- Note: Verify all details with official vendor sources before applying patches.
Affected Products
No affected products information available.
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