EEF-CVE-2026-54890
- Source
- https://cna.erlef.org/osv/EEF-CVE-2026-54890.html
- Import Source
- https://cna.erlef.org/osv/EEF-CVE-2026-54890.json
- JSON Data
- https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/EEF-CVE-2026-54890
- Aliases
-
- CVE-2026-54890
- GHSA-54pw-5645-jh86
- Published
- 2026-07-27T15:39:03.475Z
- Modified
- 2026-07-27T20:01:03.089043Z
- 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
-
Summary
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 BIT_BINARY_EXT 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 binary_to_term/2 (which only restricts atom creation and does not perform structural validation of binary encodings).
Any application that decodes ETF from untrusted sources via binary_to_term/1,2 or enif_binary_to_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.
Workaround
Do not call binary_to_term/1,2 or enif_binary_to_term() on data from untrusted sources. The OTP Secure Coding Guidelines (DSG-011) recommend avoiding these functions altogether on untrusted input and using an alternative serialization format (for example JSON or Protocol Buffers) instead.
- Database specific
{ "cwe_ids": [ "CWE-191", "CWE-789", "CWE-1284" ], "capec_ids": [ "CAPEC-92", "CAPEC-130" ], "cpe_ids": [ "cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang\\/otp:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*" ] }- References
- Credits
-
-
- Paul Guyot - FINDER
-
- Lukas Backström - FINDER
-
- John Högberg - REMEDIATION_DEVELOPER
-
Affected packages
Git / github.com/erlang/otp
Database specific
source
"https://cna.erlef.org/osv/EEF-CVE-2026-54890.json"
vanir_signatures_modified
"2026-07-27T20:01:03Z"
vanir_signatures
[
{
"digest": {
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],
"threshold": 0.9
},
"id": "EEF-CVE-2026-54890-4abfbfc4",
"deprecated": false,
"signature_version": "v1",
"source": "https://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd",
"signature_type": "Line",
"target": {
"file": "erts/emulator/beam/external.c"
}
},
{
"digest": {
"function_hash": "274620051191622708189806810367620417122",
"length": 18355.0
},
"id": "EEF-CVE-2026-54890-cd766378",
"deprecated": false,
"signature_version": "v1",
"source": "https://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd",
"signature_type": "Function",
"target": {
"function": "dec_term",
"file": "erts/emulator/beam/external.c"
}
}
]