pbkdf2 rehashes long passwords on every iteration, enabling denial of service (CVE-2026-102414) | HOL Guard CVE

Medium · CVSS 6.3CVE-2026-102414

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

Answer in brief

CVE-2026-102414 records a Medium severity (CVSS 6.3) vulnerability in pbkdf2 rehashes long passwords on every iteration, enabling denial of service. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps browserify/pbkdf2 (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.

Analysis pending evidence review

HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.

Published Sep 29, 2026Updated Sep 29, 2026Source checked Sep 29, 2026First seen by HOL Sep 29, 2026Material review Sep 29, 2026

Upstream Advisory

Key facts

Risk: Medium · CVSS 6.3
Exploitation: Not marked as known exploited
Affected software: 1 mapped package or product
Fix availability: Not reported

Why this deserves its current priority

CVSS is 6.3. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.

Analysis status

Analysis pending evidence review

Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.

Affected scope and exposure questions

The current feed maps browserify/pbkdf2 (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.

Mapped affected packages and fixed versions
Package	Affected range	Fixed version
browserify/pbkdf2generic	>=0 <=3.1.6	Not reported

Recommended response

Check inventory. Check lockfiles and deployed manifests for browserify/pbkdf2.
Review the reported fix. Source-reported solution: Upgrade to a version of pbkdf2 that includes the fix, which pre-hashes passwords longer than the digest block size once before iterating, or, enforce literally any reasonable maximum password length before calling pbkdf2.

Evidence timeline and material changes

Published upstream
Sep 29, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:record
Source modified
Sep 29, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:record
First seen by HOL
Sep 29, 2026

Sources and claim methodology

Upstream source 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.

Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.