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Critical

Missing JWT Signature Verification in AWS Ops Wheel v2 API

IdentifiersCVE-2026-6911CWE-347· Improper Verification of…

CVE-2026-6911 is a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in the v2 API of AWS Ops Wheel. The application accepted JWTs by base64-decoding the token payload without verifying the cryptographic signature against the Amazon Cognito User Pool RSA signing key. The insecure token handling is attributed to the functions decode_jwt_payload_only() and validate_token_basic(), which did not enforce JWT signature validation. As a result, an unauthenticated attacker can craft a forged JWT with arbitrary claims, including administrative roles and tenant identifiers, and submit it to the API Gateway endpoint to obtain unintended administrative access. The issue affects AWS Ops Wheel v2 deployments built from Pull Request 147 through Pull Request 163; AWS Ops Wheel v1 is not affected. The flaw was fixed in Pull Request 164, which added RS256 signature verification to JWT validation.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation gives an unauthenticated attacker full administrative control over the affected AWS Ops Wheel deployment. An attacker can read, modify, and delete all application data across tenants, resulting in complete compromise of confidentiality and integrity and potential availability impact through destructive actions. The attacker can also manage Amazon Cognito user accounts within the deployment's User Pool, which can be used to lock out legitimate users, create or maintain persistent access, and further compromise the environment. The vulnerability is cross-tenant in scope within the deployment.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate redeployment is not possible, reduce exposure by restricting network access to the API Gateway endpoint to only trusted sources where feasible, and monitor for anomalous administrative API activity and suspicious Cognito user-management operations. Review logs for forged or malformed JWT usage and unexpected cross-tenant administrative actions. Because the flaw permits unauthenticated token forgery, mitigation short of patching is limited; definitive risk reduction requires updating the application to enforce JWT signature verification.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Redeploy AWS Ops Wheel from the updated repository containing the fix, and ensure Pull Request 164 or later is included in the deployed codebase. Specifically, update vulnerable v2 deployments in the affected range (PR 147 through PR 163) to a version that enforces RS256 JWT signature verification against the Cognito User Pool signing keys. Any forked or derivative codebases that incorporated the vulnerable v2 API logic should be reviewed and patched to implement proper JWT signature validation before redeployment.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
Amazon Web ServicesAws Ops Wheelapplication
Amazon Web ServicesOps Wheelapplication

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Threat actor evidence

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Detection signatures

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Social activity7

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