Unbounded integer parsing in JSON.decode/1 enables CPU and memory exhaustion denial of service in Elixir (elixir-lang elixir)

CVE-2026-115274
MEDIUM 6.9

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.50 % Β· percentile 43 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
EEF
NVD status
Deferred

Description

Improper Validation of Specified Quantity in Input vulnerability in the Elixir standard library's JSON module allows an unauthenticated attacker who supplies a JSON document to cause a denial of service through CPU and memory exhaustion. JSON.decode/1 and JSON.decode!/1 convert each integer literal with erlang:binary_to_integer/1 and do not bound its length. A literal of one million digits decodes successfully but costs 100 to 300 times as much CPU as a string of the same length, so one request body of a few megabytes holds a scheduler for about a second. A literal of more than about 1.29 million digits raises SystemLimitError. Applications generated by phx.new decode request bodies with JSON in Plug.Parsers, before routing and authentication. This issue affects elixir: from 1.18.0-rc.0 before 1.18.6, from 1.19.0-rc.0 before 1.19.7, and from 1.20.0-rc.0 before 1.20.5.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-1284 β€” Improper Validation of Specified Quantity in Input

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.9CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NEEF
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.9CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD Β· 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db (Secondary)

European references

Affected products

ProductVersions
elixir-lang Β· elixiraffected 1.18.0-rc.0 < 1.18.6 ; affected 1.19.0-rc.0 < 1.19.7 ; affected 1.20.0-rc.0 < 1.20.5
elixir-lang Β· elixiraffected 793c1147210388587defb649f25f293ffbfa6b1b < *

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST β€” attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA β€” reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain β€” this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD