CVE-2026-40164 | Vulnerability Intelligence

Stored catalog record

Source record retrieved 2026-10-28T10:18:56.777324+00:00. Scheduled imports handle updates; this page does not assert that the provider was queried just now.

Vulnerability overview

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.

Patch review priority

Assess exposure and vendor guidance

No higher-priority signal is available in the current stored evidence.

FIRST EPSS: 0.37% · percentile 30.2 · score date 2026-10-27.

EPSS estimates probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It does not measure your exposure or prove exploitation. The elevated threshold is 10%; CISA KEV takes precedence. About FIRST EPSS ↗

Severity and scoring

CVSS score: 7.5 · HIGH
CVSS version: 3.1
CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weaknesses: CWE-328, CWE-341, CWE-407

CVSS measures technical severity; it does not establish whether this vulnerability is being exploited in your environment.

Known exploitation and remediation

Not listed in the CISA catalog retrieved for this record. This does not establish that exploitation has not occurred.

Verify affected versions and patch availability in the vendor advisory before making changes.

Affected products and versions

NVD has not supplied affected-version configurations for this record. Check the vendor references below.

Advisories and references

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