CVE-2026-54890

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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
Published
2026-07-27T15:39:03.475Z
Modified
2026-07-29T08:20:28.828936Z
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 
{
    "cna_assigner": "EEF",
    "osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/54xxx/CVE-2026-54890.json",
    "unresolved_ranges": [
        {
            "extracted_events": [
                {
                    "introduced": "15.0"
                },
                {
                    "fixed": "*"
                },
                {
                    "introduced": "27.0"
                },
                {
                    "fixed": "*"
                },
                {
                    "introduced": "24ef4cbaeda9b9c26682cba75f2f15b0c58722aa"
                },
                {
                    "fixed": "dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd"
                }
            ],
            "source": "AFFECTED_FIELD"
        },
        {
            "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_FIELD"
        },
        {
            "extracted_events": [
                {
                    "introduced": "27.0"
                },
                {
                    "introduced": "15.0"
                },
                {
                    "fixed": "17.0.4"
                }
            ],
            "source": "DESCRIPTION"
        }
    ],
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-1284",
        "CWE-191",
        "CWE-789"
    ]
}
References

Affected packages

Git / github.com/erlang/otp

Affected ranges

Type
GIT
Repo
https://github.com/erlang/otp
Events
Introduced
0 Unknown introduced commit / All previous commits are affected
Fixed
dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd
Database specific 
{
    "source": "REFERENCES"
}

Affected versions

OTP-17.*
OTP-17.0
OTP-18.*
OTP-18.0
OTP-18.0-rc1
OTP-19.*
OTP-19.0
OTP-19.0-rc1
OTP-19.0-rc2
OTP-20.*
OTP-20.0
OTP-20.0-rc1
OTP-20.0-rc2
OTP-21.*
OTP-21.0
OTP-21.0-rc1
OTP-21.0-rc2
OTP-22.*
OTP-22.0
OTP-22.0-rc1
OTP-22.0-rc2
OTP-22.0-rc3
OTP-23.*
OTP-23.0
OTP-23.0-rc1
OTP-23.0-rc2
OTP-23.0-rc3
OTP-24.*
OTP-24.0
OTP-24.0-rc1
OTP-24.0-rc2
OTP-24.0-rc3
OTP-25.*
OTP-25.0
OTP-25.0-rc1
OTP-25.0-rc2
OTP-25.0-rc3
OTP-26.*
OTP-26.0
OTP-26.0-rc1
OTP-26.0-rc2
OTP-26.0-rc3
OTP-27.*
OTP-27.0
OTP-27.0-rc1
OTP-27.0-rc2
OTP-27.0-rc3
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_17.*
OTP_17.0-rc1
OTP_17.0-rc2
Other
OTP_R13B03
OTP_R13B04
OTP_R14A
OTP_R14B
OTP_R14B01
OTP_R14B02
OTP_R14B03
OTP_R15A
OTP_R15B
OTP_R16A_RELEASE_CANDIDATE
OTP_R16B
patch-base-27

Database specific

vanir_signatures_modified 
"2026-07-29T08:20:28Z"
vanir_signatures 
[
    {
        "target": {
            "file": "erts/emulator/beam/external.c"
        },
        "id": "CVE-2026-54890-4abfbfc4",
        "digest": {
            "line_hashes": [
                "223356975444351176981946065934048817343",
                "59229827200950078539542017877782742682",
                "140821498450087628554005110325561470385",
                "263745618633766055517863478365891081139",
                "178332241705825645815632593621866408086"
            ],
            "threshold": 0.9
        },
        "deprecated": false,
        "signature_version": "v1",
        "signature_type": "Line",
        "source": "https://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd"
    },
    {
        "target": {
            "function": "dec_term",
            "file": "erts/emulator/beam/external.c"
        },
        "id": "CVE-2026-54890-cd766378",
        "digest": {
            "function_hash": "274620051191622708189806810367620417122",
            "length": 18355.0
        },
        "deprecated": false,
        "signature_version": "v1",
        "signature_type": "Function",
        "source": "https://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd"
    }
]
source 
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-54890.json"