CVE-2026-102414

pbkdf2 rehashes long passwords on every iteration, enabling denial of service

State
Published
Severity
6.3 Medium
Published
Sep 29, 2026
Updated
Sep 30, 2026
Reserved
Sep 29, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

pbkdf2 through 3.1.6 re-hashes passwords longer than the digest's block size on every iteration in its JavaScript fallback (lib/sync.js). A password longer than the block size (64 bytes, or 128 bytes for sha384 and sha512) is passed to HMAC as the key on every iteration, and HMAC hashes such keys in full each time. Cost is therefore O(iterations × password length), and a long password can block the event loop. The fallback is used by pbkdf2Sync and pbkdf2 on Node.js before 0.12, on Bun (1.0.0 through 1.1.34, and 1.2.6 and later), and on Deno 2.9.0 and later, because their native pbkdf2Sync fails the library's feature check. It is also used when lib/sync.js is imported directly. Node.js 0.12 and later, and browser builds (which use lib/sync-browser.js), are not affected. Applications that enforce a reasonable maximum password length are not meaningfully affected.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
4.06.3 MediumCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:Nharborist
3.13.7 LowCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:Lharborist

Weaknesses

  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affected Products

ProductVersions
pbkdf2browserify
  • 3.1.6 and earlierAffected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.