CVE-2026-54890

Source
https://cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-54890
Import Source
https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-54890.json
JSON Data
https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/CVE-2026-54890
Aliases
Downstream
Related
Published
2026-07-27T15:39:03.475Z
Modified
2026-08-21T09:27:03.804198462Z
Severity
  • 8.2 (High) CVSS_V4 - CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N CVSS Calculator
Summary
BEAM VM crash via integer underflow in binary_to_term BIT_BINARY_EXT decoding
Details

Integer Underflow (Wrap or Wraparound) vulnerability in erlang otp erlang/otp (erts modules), erlang otp erts (erts modules) allows Forced Integer Overflow, Excessive Allocation. This vulnerability is associated with program files erts/emulator/beam/external.c, emulator/beam/external.c.

The BITBINARYEXT tag (77) handler in the External Term Format (ETF) decoder accepts an encoding with both length and trailing-bits fields set to zero. The subsequent computation of the bitstring size underflows an unsigned integer, producing a value of roughly 2^64 that is then passed as a memory allocation size. The allocator aborts the entire node with a message such as "Cannot allocate 2305843009213693951 bytes of memory (of type binary)".

The crash is a VM-level abort, not an Erlang-level exception. It cannot be intercepted by supervision trees, by try/catch, or by passing the [safe] option to binarytoterm/2 (which only restricts atom creation and does not perform structural validation of binary encodings).

Any application that decodes ETF from untrusted sources via binarytoterm/1,2 or enifbinaryto_term() is exposed. The Erlang distribution protocol also decodes incoming terms through the same code path, but distribution is expected to run on trusted networks per the OTP Secure Coding Guidelines (DSG-011).

This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.4, OTP 28.5.0.4 and OTP 27.3.4.15, corresponding to erts from 15.0 before 17.0.4, 16.4.0.4 and 15.2.7.11.

Database specific
{
    "unresolved_ranges": [
        {
            "extracted_events": [
                {
                    "introduced": "15.0"
                },
                {
                    "fixed": "*"
                },
                {
                    "introduced": "27.0"
                },
                {
                    "fixed": "*"
                },
                {
                    "introduced": "24ef4cbaeda9b9c26682cba75f2f15b0c58722aa"
                },
                {
                    "fixed": "dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd"
                }
            ],
            "source": "AFFECTED_FIELD"
        }
    ],
    "cna_assigner": "EEF",
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-1284",
        "CWE-191",
        "CWE-789"
    ],
    "osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/54xxx/CVE-2026-54890.json"
}
References

Affected packages

Git / github.com/erlang/otp

Affected ranges

Type
GIT
Repo
https://github.com/erlang/otp
Events
Database specific
Show details
{
    "extracted_events": [
        {
            "introduced": "27.0"
        },
        {
            "fixed": "27.3.4.15"
        },
        {
            "introduced": "28.0"
        },
        {
            "fixed": "28.5.0.4"
        },
        {
            "introduced": "29.0"
        },
        {
            "fixed": "29.0.4"
        }
    ],
    "source": [
        "CPE_RANGE",
        "REFERENCES"
    ],
    "cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang\\/otp:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*"
}

Affected versions

OTP-27.*
OTP-27.0
OTP-27.1
OTP-27.2
OTP-27.3
OTP-27.3.1
OTP-27.3.2
OTP-27.3.3
OTP-27.3.4
OTP-27.3.4.1
OTP-27.3.4.10
OTP-27.3.4.11
OTP-27.3.4.12
OTP-27.3.4.13
OTP-27.3.4.14
OTP-27.3.4.2
OTP-27.3.4.3
OTP-27.3.4.4
OTP-27.3.4.5
OTP-27.3.4.6
OTP-27.3.4.7
OTP-27.3.4.8
OTP-27.3.4.9
OTP-28.*
OTP-28.0
OTP-28.1
OTP-28.4
OTP-28.5
OTP-28.5.0.1
OTP-28.5.0.2
OTP-28.5.0.3
OTP-29.*
OTP-29.0
OTP-29.0.1
OTP-29.0.2
OTP-29.0.3
Other
patch-base-27
patch-base-28

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-54890.json"
vanir_signatures
[
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                "263745618633766055517863478365891081139",
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            ]
        },
        "source": "https://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd",
        "deprecated": false,
        "id": "CVE-2026-54890-4abfbfc4",
        "signature_version": "v1",
        "signature_type": "Line",
        "target": {
            "file": "erts/emulator/beam/external.c"
        }
    },
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        "source": "https://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd",
        "deprecated": false,
        "id": "CVE-2026-54890-cd766378",
        "signature_version": "v1",
        "target": {
            "function": "dec_term",
            "file": "erts/emulator/beam/external.c"
        },
        "digest": {
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]
vanir_signatures_modified
"2026-08-12T16:41:17Z"