CVE-2026-40164CWE-328CWE-407

jq: Algorithmic complexity DoS via hardcoded MurmurHash3 seed

High · published April 13, 2026

CVSS v3.1
7.5
EPSS
1%
Percentile
47.7
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
7.5 · HIGH
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00593 · 47.7th percentile
Weaknesses
CWE-328 · Use of Weak Hash; CWE-407 · Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity
Published
2026-04-13T23:40Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 13 APR 23:40Z
    jq: Algorithmic complexity DoS via hardcoded MurmurHash3 seed
    cvelistv5