CVE-2023-50967 identifies a denial of service (DoS) vulnerability in the latchset jose library, a tool commonly used for JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) operations. The flaw stems from the library's handling of the PBES2 Count (p2c) parameter, which is part of the password-based encryption scheme. Specifically, the library does not properly limit the size of the p2c value, allowing an attacker to specify an excessively large count. This causes the library to perform a computationally expensive operation, leading to high CPU usage and effectively a denial of service condition. The vulnerability is exploitable remotely without requiring any authentication or user interaction, increasing its risk profile. The CVSS v3.1 score of 7.5 reflects a high severity due to the network attack vector, low attack complexity, and the impact on availability without affecting confidentiality or integrity. Although no public exploits have been reported, the vulnerability falls under CWE-400, indicating uncontrolled resource consumption. Organizations using latchset jose in their cryptographic workflows or web services should be aware of this risk. No official patches were listed at the time of publication, so interim mitigations are necessary. This vulnerability highlights the importance of input validation and resource management in cryptographic libraries to prevent denial of service attacks.

The primary impact of CVE-2023-50967 is on the availability of services that utilize the latchset jose library for cryptographic operations. An attacker can remotely trigger excessive CPU consumption by sending specially crafted requests with a large p2c value, potentially causing service slowdowns or outages. For European organizations, this can disrupt critical applications relying on secure message encryption or signing, including financial services, healthcare systems, and government platforms. The denial of service could lead to downtime, loss of customer trust, and operational delays. Since the vulnerability does not affect confidentiality or integrity, data breaches are not a direct concern; however, the service disruption itself can have cascading effects on business continuity and compliance with regulatory uptime requirements such as those mandated by GDPR and NIS Directive. The lack of authentication requirement increases the attack surface, making public-facing services particularly vulnerable. Organizations with high transaction volumes or real-time processing are at greater risk of impact due to resource exhaustion.

1. Monitor latchset jose library updates closely and apply patches as soon as they become available to address CVE-2023-50967. 2. Implement strict input validation on the p2c parameter to enforce reasonable upper limits, preventing excessively large values from being processed. 3. Employ rate limiting and anomaly detection on endpoints that process JOSE operations to detect and block suspicious request patterns indicative of DoS attempts. 4. Use resource quotas or CPU usage limits at the application or container level to contain potential resource exhaustion. 5. Consider deploying web application firewalls (WAFs) with custom rules to filter out malicious payloads targeting this vulnerability. 6. Conduct regular security assessments and stress testing to identify potential denial of service vectors related to cryptographic processing. 7. Educate development teams about secure handling of cryptographic parameters and the risks of uncontrolled resource consumption. 8. If immediate patching is not possible, isolate vulnerable services behind additional protective layers or limit their exposure to untrusted networks.