Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 : 0115: jq (ALINUX3-SA-2026:0115)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 316581

Synopsis

The remote Alibaba Cloud Linux host is missing a security update.

Description

The remote Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the ALINUX3-SA-2026:0115 advisory.

Package updates are available for Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 that fix the following vulnerabilities:

CVE-2026-39979:
A flaw was found in jq, a command line JSON processor, specifically in the libjq API. Parsing a malformed JSON input from a non-NUL-terminated buffer using the `jv_parse_sized` function can cause an out-of-bounds read, resulting in an application crash and a possible memory disclosure within the error message generated by the parser.

CVE-2026-40164:
jq is a command-line JSON processor. Before commit 0c7d133c3c7e37c00b6d46b658a02244fdd3c784, jq used MurmurHash3 with a hardcoded, publicly visible seed (0x432A9843) for all JSON object hash table operations, which allowed an attacker to precompute key collisions offline. By supplying a crafted JSON object (~100 KB) where all keys hashed to the same bucket, hash table lookups degraded from O(1) to O(n), turning any jq expression into an O(n) operation and causing significant CPU exhaustion. This affected common jq use cases such as CI/CD pipelines, web services, and data processing scripts, and was far more practical to exploit than existing heap overflow issues since it required only a small payload. This issue has been patched in commit 0c7d133c3c7e37c00b6d46b658a02244fdd3c784.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Alibaba Cloud Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the affected jq package.

See Also

http://mirrors.aliyun.com/alinux/3/cve/alinux3-sa-20260115.xml

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 316581

File Name: alinux3_sa_2026-0115.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Published: 5/25/2026

Updated: 5/25/2026

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.4

Temporal Score: 5

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-39979

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.5

Temporal Score: 5.9

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

Threat Score: 5.5

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:P

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:alibabacloud:alibaba_cloud_linux_3, p-cpe:/a:alibabacloud:alibaba_cloud_linux_3:jq

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, Host/Alibaba/release, Host/Alibaba/rpm-list

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 5/19/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 4/13/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-39979, CVE-2026-40164