What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-10555

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 4.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2018-05-31 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-20

Description

Since "algorithm" isn't enforced in jwt.decode()in jwt-simple 0.3.0 and earlier, a malicious user could choose what algorithm is sent sent to the server. If the server is expecting RSA but is sent HMAC-SHA with RSA's public key, the server will think the public key is actually an HMAC private key. This could be used to forge any data an attacker wants.

Affected products

• HackerOne jwt-simple node module: through 0.3.0

References

• https://auth0.com/blog/2015/03/31/critical-vulnerabilities-in-json-web-token-libraries/
• https://github.com/hokaccha/node-jwt-simple/pull/14
• https://github.com/hokaccha/node-jwt-simple/pull/16
• https://nodesecurity.io/advisories/87
• https://auth0.com/blog/2015/03/31/critical-vulnerabilities-in-json-web-token-libraries/
• https://github.com/hokaccha/node-jwt-simple/pull/14
• https://github.com/hokaccha/node-jwt-simple/pull/16
• https://nodesecurity.io/advisories/87

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