CVE-2026-48853
Remote code execution and denial of service via unsafe Erlang term deserialization in elixir-grpc/grpc
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 9.2 Critical
- Published
- Jun 15, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 24, 2026
- Reserved
- May 25, 2026
Description
Deserialization of Untrusted Data and Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerabilities in elixir-grpc grpc allow unauthenticated attackers to crash the BEAM node via atom table exhaustion and, when a decoded term flows into a call site that invokes it, achieve remote code execution on the server.
'Elixir.GRPC.Codec.Erlpack':decode/2 (lib/grpc/codec/erlpack.ex) calls :erlang.binary_to_term/1 on the raw gRPC message body without the :safe option, no size bound, and no type guard. Any unauthenticated peer that sends a request with Content-Type: application/grpc+erlpack can send a crafted payload that mints arbitrary new atoms (which are never garbage-collected, exhausting the bounded atom table and crashing the VM) or that encodes a fun term which, if applied anywhere downstream, executes attacker-controlled code inside the server process.
This issue affects grpc: from 0.4.0 before 1.0.0.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | 9.2 Critical | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N | EEF |
Weaknesses
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
grpcelixir-grpc |
|
grpcelixir-grpc |
|
References
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