CVE-2026-54890
Description
A flaw was found in Erlang/OTP. A remote attacker can exploit an integer underflow vulnerability in the External Term Format (ETF) decoder, specifically within the binary_to_term function. By sending a specially crafted ETF payload with a zero-length BIT_BINARY_EXT tag, the attacker can trigger an unsigned integer underflow. This leads to an attempt to allocate an excessively large amount of memory, causing the Erlang Virtual Machine (VM) to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This VM-level crash cannot be handled by standard Erlang error mechanisms.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7.5 | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | N/A |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | N/A |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | N/A |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | N/A |
| Confidentiality | None | N/A | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | None | N/A | N/A |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Instability
This weakness will generally lead to undefined behavior and therefore crashes. In the case of overflows involving loop index variables, the likelihood of infinite loops is also high.
Integrity
Technical Impact: Modify Memory
If the value in question is important to data (as opposed to flow), simple data corruption has occurred. Also, if the wrap around results in other conditions such as buffer overflows, further memory corruption may occur.
Confidentiality,Availability,Access Control
Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; Bypass Protection Mechanism
This weakness can sometimes trigger buffer overflows which can be used to execute arbitrary code. This is usually outside the scope of a program's implicit security policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
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