CVE-2026-49852

Summary joserfc.jwt.decode accepts attacker-forged HMAC-signed tokens when the caller-supplied verification key is the empty string or None. HMACAlgorithm.sign and HMACAlgorithm.verify in src/joserfc/_rfc7518/jws_algs.py:62-70 feed whatever OctKey.get_op_key(...) produced into hmac.new(...), and OctKey.import_key only emits a SecurityWarning when the raw key is shorter than 14 bytes without rejecting zero-length input. Any application whose JWT secret is sourced from an unset environment variable, an unset Redis / DB row, a key finder fallback that returns "", or a Hash.new("")-style default verifies attacker tokens forged with HMAC(key=b"", signing_input) because the attacker trivially reproduces the same digest with no secret knowledge. This is a cross-language sibling of jwt/ruby-jwt GHSA-c32j-vqhx-rx3x / CVE-2026-45363 (HS256/HS384/HS512 verify accepted an empty/nil HMAC key, filed 2026-05-13). ruby-jwt v3.2.0 added an ensure_valid_key! precondition that rejects empty keys at both sign and verify entry; joserfc has no equivalent. (The same primitive lives in the deprecated authlib.jose module by the same maintainer; filing this advisory against joserfc alongside a separate authlib advisory because the codebases are independent shipping artifacts on PyPI.) Affected versions joserfc (PyPI) <= 1.6.7 (latest published release reproduces). No patched release. Privilege required Unauthenticated. Any HTTP / RPC endpoint that calls joserfc.jwt.decode with a verification key sourced from configuration is reachable. The condition that makes the bug observable is operator-side: the configured secret resolves to "" or None. Common patterns that produce this state in production: - OctKey.import_key(os.environ.get("JWT_SECRET", "")) - A key finder callable that returns "" / None for an unk

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