Go JOSE: Panics in JSON parsing

MEDIUM 6.9CVE-2026-116586 · GHSA-vvm8-gf78-28g4 · Published 26/10/2026 · updated 30/10/2026

In short

CVE-2026-116586 is a MEDIUM (CVSS 6.9) vulnerability affecting github.com/go-jose/go-jose/v3, github.com/go-jose/go-jose/v4.
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days (EPSS): 0.29%, higher than 21.9% of all vulnerabilities.
Fix: update to 4.1.5 or later.

Package	Affected versions	Patched versions
github.com/go-jose/go-jose/v3 Go	`≤ 3.0.5`	No fix yet
github.com/go-jose/go-jose/v4 Go	`< 4.1.5`	`4.1.5`

Description

Summary

Parsing deeply nested JSON structures can hit Go's stack limit, causing the application to crash.

Note: this advisory is the same as https://github.com/go-jose/go-jose/security/advisories/GHSA-6mp9-8xrw-74r4.

Impact

Denial of service vulnerability. Any application that parses untrusted JSON via go-jose is exposed.

Workarounds

Reject large inputs before parsing them.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dohyun Kim (@azza999), Joshua Rogers of AISLE Research, and Sueun Cho for alerting us to the need to patch this.

NVD description

Go JOSE provides an implementation of the Javascript Object Signing and Encryption set of standards in Go, including support for JSON Web Encryption (JWE), JSON Web Signature (JWS), and JSON Web Token (JWT) standards. Prior to 4.1.5, parsing attacker-controlled JSON through go-jose allows deeply nested arrays or objects to exceed Go's stack limit. The resulting stack overflow crashes the application and permits denial of service in applications that parse untrusted JSON through go-jose. This issue is fixed in version 4.1.5.