Description
The jose library accepts ECDSA (ES256, ES256K, ES384, and ES512) JWS signatures of a non-canonical length. When verifying an ECDSA signature, jose_jwk_kty_ec:verify/4 in src/jwk/jose_jwk_kty_ec.erl splits the raw signature in half by its actual byte length (split_binary(Signature, byte_size(Signature) div 2)) instead of enforcing the fixed length required by RFC 7518 §3.4, and then decodes each half with crypto:bytes_to_integer/1, which ignores leading zero bytes.

As a result, an attacker who holds one valid token can prepend leading zero bytes to each of the R and S halves to produce longer signatures that still split evenly and decode to the same (r, s) pair, so many distinct signature byte strings all verify against the same key (signature malleability). This does not allow forging new payloads or impersonating a signer, because the underlying (r, s) values are unchanged. It does defeat any security control that assumes a valid token or its signature is unique, such as token-revocation-by-hash, replay or idempotency caches, and deduplication logic.

This issue affects jose: from 1.0.0 before 1.11.13.
Published: 2026-10-26
Score: 5.1 Medium
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
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Remediation

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History

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description The jose library accepts ECDSA (ES256, ES256K, ES384, and ES512) JWS signatures of a non-canonical length. When verifying an ECDSA signature, jose_jwk_kty_ec:verify/4 in src/jwk/jose_jwk_kty_ec.erl splits the raw signature in half by its actual byte length (split_binary(Signature, byte_size(Signature) div 2)) instead of enforcing the fixed length required by RFC 7518 §3.4, and then decodes each half with crypto:bytes_to_integer/1, which ignores leading zero bytes. As a result, an attacker who holds one valid token can prepend leading zero bytes to each of the R and S halves to produce longer signatures that still split evenly and decode to the same (r, s) pair, so many distinct signature byte strings all verify against the same key (signature malleability). This does not allow forging new payloads or impersonating a signer, because the underlying (r, s) values are unchanged. It does defeat any security control that assumes a valid token or its signature is unique, such as token-revocation-by-hash, replay or idempotency caches, and deduplication logic. This issue affects jose: from 1.0.0 before 1.11.13.
Title ECDSA signature length is not validated in jose, allowing signature malleability
First Time appeared Potatosalad
Potatosalad jose
Weaknesses CWE-347
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:potatosalad:jose:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Potatosalad
Potatosalad jose
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 5.1, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}


Subscriptions

Potatosalad Jose
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: EEF

Published:

Updated: 2026-10-26T19:53:56.649Z

Reserved: 2026-07-22T13:58:26.233Z

Link: CVE-2026-65632

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-10-26T20:17:59.170

Modified: 2026-10-26T20:17:59.170

Link: CVE-2026-65632

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses
  • CWE-347

    Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature