CVE-2026-40164
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.
How to fix CVE-2026-40164
To remediate CVE-2026-40164, upgrade the affected package to a fixed version below.
- —upgrade to 1.6-2.1+deb11u2 or later
Is CVE-2026-40164 being exploited?
Low — EPSS is 0.0%, meaning exploitation activity has not been observed at scale.
Affected packages (1)
- from 0, < 1.6-2.1+deb11u2
CVSS scores
| Source | Version | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| osv | CVSS 3.1 | HIGH7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |