CVE-2026-54890 — BEAM VM crash via integer underflow in binary_to_term BIT_BINARY_EXT decoding

Affected: Erlang OTP

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.

USN-8827-1 — erlang vulnerabilities

Affected: Ubuntu:Pro:14.04:LTS: erlang, Ubuntu:Pro:16.04:LTS: erlang, Ubuntu:Pro:18.04:LTS: erlang, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: erlang, Ubuntu:22.04:LTS: erlang, Ubuntu:24.04:LTS: erlang, Ubuntu:26.04:LTS: erlang

It was discovered that the Erlang Port Mapper Daemon did not properly handle slow connections. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2026-42792)

It was discovered that Erlang incorrectly handled certain external term format data, leading to heap corruption. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause Erlang to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. (CVE-2026-55737)

It was discovered that Erlang incorrectly handled invalid external term format data. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause Erlang to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. (CVE-2026-54890)

It was discovered that Erlang incorrectly handled certain packet lengths, leading to a buffer overflow. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause Erlang to crash or execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2026-75538)

It was discovered that the Erlang Megaco flex scanner incorrectly handled certain input, leading to a buffer overflow. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause Erlang to crash or execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2026-59250)

It was discovered that Erlang TLS clients incorrectly accepted cipher suites that they had not offered. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to intercept and modify TLS communications. (CVE-2026-55953)

It was discovered that Erlang incorrectly handled certain certificate chains. A remote att…

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CVE-2026-54890 — BEAM VM crash via integer underflow in binary_to_term BIT_BINARY_EXT decoding

USN-8827-1 — erlang vulnerabilities