Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-43896 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-43896 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-43896?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 6.2, published 11 May 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Jqlang Jq <= 1.8.1.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-43896?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-43896 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-43896?
- Check whether you run Jqlang Jq at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
A stack exhaustion vulnerability exists in jq versions 1.8.1 and earlier due to uncontrolled recursion in the 'jv_object_merge_recursive' function within 'src/jv.c'. The issue is triggered when the '*' operator is used to merge two objects that contain deeply nested structures. Because the function lacks a recursion depth limit, processing highly nested objects (e.g., 75,000 levels deep) exhausts the C call stack, resulting in a segmentation fault. An attacker who can provide a malicious jq script or influence the objects being merged can cause a denial-of-service. As of the advisory date, no patched version has been released.
Affected products
- jqlang jq <= 1.8.1
Timeline
- 2026-05-05: advisory: GitHub Security Advisory published by maintainers
- 2026-05-11: disclosed: NVD publication date