CVE-2026-44351

fast-jwt: JWT auth bypass due to empty HMAC secret accepted by async key resolver

Published 13 May 2026Modified 26 Oct 2026CWE 287, 326, 1391

In the Trivy database since at least 24 Oct 2026, 07:11 UTCWhen it arrived before that build is not recorded.

Severity by source

GHSA9.1CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Trivy's own label is CRITICAL. Rated critical by GHSA.

Description

fast-jwt provides fast JSON Web Token (JWT) implementation. Prior to 6.2.4, a critical authentication-bypass vulnerability in fast-jwt's async key-resolver flow allows any unauthenticated attacker to forge arbitrary JWTs that are accepted as authentic. When the application's key resolver returns an empty string (''), for example via the common keys[decoded.header.kid] || '' JWKS-style fallback, fast-jwt converts it to a zero-length Buffer, hands it to crypto.createSecretKey, derives allowedAlgorithms = ['HS256','HS384','HS512'] from it, and then verifies the token's signature against an empty-key HMAC. The attacker simply computes HMAC-SHA256(key='', input='${header}.${payload}'), which Node accepts without complaint — and the verifier returns the attacker-chosen payload (sub, admin, scopes, etc.) as authentic. This vulnerability is fixed in 6.2.4.

Affected packages and fixed versions

Source	Package	Fixed in
npm::GitHub Security Advisory npm	fast-jwt	6.2.4

References

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