CVE-2026-40164 PUBLISHED

jq: Algorithmic complexity DoS via hardcoded MurmurHash3 seed

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 09.04.2026 Published: 13.04.2026 Updated: 13.04.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS Score: 7.5

Product Status

Vendor jqlang
Product jq
Versions
  • Version < 0c7d133c3c7e37c00b6d46b658a02244fdd3c784 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-328: Use of Weak Hash CWE
  • CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity CWE