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GHSA-h2fg-54x9-5qhq

HighCVSS 7.5 / 10
Published Feb 11, 2022·Last modified Feb 4, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Problem Description

The NATS account system has an Operator trusted by the servers, which signs Accounts, and each Account can then create and sign Users within their account. The Operator should be able to safely issue Accounts to other entities which it does not fully trust.

A malicious Account could create and sign a User JWT with a state not created by the normal tooling, such that decoding by the NATS JWT library (written in Go) would attempt a nil dereference, aborting execution.

The NATS Server is known to be impacted by this.

Affected versions

JWT library

  • all versions prior to 1.1.0

NATS Server

  • Version 2 prior to 2.1.9

Impact

JWT library

  • Programs would nil dereference and panic, aborting execution by default.

NATS server

  • Denial of Service caused by process termination

Workaround

If your NATS servers do not trust any accounts which are managed by untrusted entities, then malformed User credentials are unlikely to be encountered.

Solution

Upgrade the JWT dependency in any application using it.

Upgrade the NATS server if using NATS Accounts.

Risk Scores
Base Score
7.5

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
6.9

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
2.09%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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