UBUNTU-CVE-2026-75758 (CVE-2026-75758)

Vulnerability from osv_ubuntu – Published: 2026-08-28 16:18 – Updated: 2026-09-02 16:27 – Source website
VLAI
Details

Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in the Elixir standard library allows an attacker who controls a list passed to inspect/1, List.to_string/1, or List.to_charlist/1 to exhaust a BEAM node's memory. Inspect.List's charlist branch in lib/elixir/lib/inspect.ex classifies a list as a charlist using List.ascii_printable?/2, which examines only the first :printable_limit (4096 by default) elements, and then calls IO.chardata_to_string/1 on the whole term. A list whose printable prefix exceeds that limit but which contains a later element that is not a code point (an atom, an out-of-range integer, or an improper tail) is therefore mis-classified, and the conversion raises ArgumentError. That conversion runs inside List.to_string/1, whose rescue clause builds its message by interpolating inspect(list), which re-enters the same branch and raises again. The nested inspection is an argument to raise, so the recursion is not in tail position and every level is retained: the process stack grows monotonically while each cycle re-walks the list, until the process is killed by max_heap_size or, by default, the node runs out of memory. List.to_charlist/1 has the same rescue shape. Below the printable limit the inner inspect/1 sees the invalid element within its counter and renders the list in ordinary bracket form, so a single ArgumentError is raised and no recursion occurs. This issue affects elixir: from 1.15.0-rc.0 before 1.18.5, from 1.19.0-rc.0 before 1.19.6, and from 1.20.0-rc.0 before 1.20.4.

Severity
5.9 (Medium)
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
N/A (UNKNOWN)
medium
References
To clipboard 

{
  "affected": [
    {
      "ecosystem_specific": {
        "binaries": [
          {
            "binary_name": "python-elixir",
            "binary_version": "0.7.1-4build0.14.04.1"
          }
        ]
      },
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "Ubuntu:14.04:LTS",
        "name": "elixir",
        "purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/elixir@0.7.1-4build0.14.04.1?arch=source\u0026distro=trusty"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "0"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ],
      "versions": [
        "0.7.1-1",
        "0.7.1-2",
        "0.7.1-4build0.14.04.1"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ecosystem_specific": {
        "binaries": [
          {
            "binary_name": "python-elixir",
            "binary_version": "0.7.1-4build0.16.04.1"
          }
        ]
      },
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "Ubuntu:16.04:LTS",
        "name": "elixir",
        "purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/elixir@0.7.1-4build0.16.04.1?arch=source\u0026distro=xenial"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "0"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ],
      "versions": [
        "0.7.1-3",
        "0.7.1-4build0.16.04.1"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ecosystem_specific": {
        "binaries": [
          {
            "binary_name": "python-elixir",
            "binary_version": "0.7.1-4build1"
          }
        ]
      },
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "Ubuntu:18.04:LTS",
        "name": "elixir",
        "purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/elixir@0.7.1-4build1?arch=source\u0026distro=bionic"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "0"
            }
          ],
          "type": "ECOSYSTEM"
        }
      ],
      "versions": [
        "0.7.1-4build1"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "aliases": [],
  "details": "Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in the Elixir standard library allows an attacker who controls a list passed to inspect/1, List.to_string/1, or List.to_charlist/1 to exhaust a BEAM node\u0027s memory. Inspect.List\u0027s charlist branch in lib/elixir/lib/inspect.ex classifies a list as a charlist using List.ascii_printable?/2, which examines only the first :printable_limit (4096 by default) elements, and then calls IO.chardata_to_string/1 on the whole term. A list whose printable prefix exceeds that limit but which contains a later element that is not a code point (an atom, an out-of-range integer, or an improper tail) is therefore mis-classified, and the conversion raises ArgumentError. That conversion runs inside List.to_string/1, whose rescue clause builds its message by interpolating inspect(list), which re-enters the same branch and raises again. The nested inspection is an argument to raise, so the recursion is not in tail position and every level is retained: the process stack grows monotonically while each cycle re-walks the list, until the process is killed by max_heap_size or, by default, the node runs out of memory. List.to_charlist/1 has the same rescue shape. Below the printable limit the inner inspect/1 sees the invalid element within its counter and renders the list in ordinary bracket form, so a single ArgumentError is raised and no recursion occurs. This issue affects elixir: from 1.15.0-rc.0 before 1.18.5, from 1.19.0-rc.0 before 1.19.6, and from 1.20.0-rc.0 before 1.20.4.",
  "id": "UBUNTU-CVE-2026-75758",
  "modified": "2026-09-02T16:27:46Z",
  "published": "2026-08-28T16:18:00Z",
  "references": [
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-75758"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-75758"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-75758.html"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/0bba5887577b1e328da825bd018815fdc519685a"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/1eff1acffd49bdcc0d7f57ca74c1603328eed68a"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/5230d73968f1b4969d2a2646786fa6c71475f5cc"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/a983c8c043b1fbf1d95df78a29149222dac2988c"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/security/advisories/GHSA-jf5q-v438-665c"
    },
    {
      "type": "REPORT",
      "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-75758"
    }
  ],
  "related": [],
  "schema_version": "1.7.0",
  "severity": [
    {
      "score": "CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N",
      "type": "CVSS_V4"
    },
    {
      "score": "medium",
      "type": "Ubuntu"
    }
  ],
  "upstream": [
    "CVE-2026-75758"
  ]
}



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