AUGUST 4, 2026
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Case File

CVE-2026-40164

HIGH · CVSS 7.5 EPSS 0.37% Public Exploit

Source: NVD + CISA KEV + EPSS (historical backfill) · Published 2026-04-14 · Last synced 2026-08-04

CyberRota Analysis

This is a high severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 7.5. Public exploit code or proof-of-concept references have been detected in its references.

Public Exploit Signal

A public exploit, PoC, GitHub repository or Metasploit reference was detected for this CVE.

Detected Signals
exploit

Note: these links are listed for security research and verification purposes only.

CVE
CVE-2026-40164
Severity
HIGH
CVSS
7.5
EPSS
0.37%

Original NVD Description

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.