Integer underflow in Erlang OTP - CVE-2026-54890
Published: September 2, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU146820
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 8.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-54890
CWE-ID: CWE-191
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service.
The vulnerability exists due to integer underflow in the ETF decoder in binary_to_term/1,2 and enif_binary_to_term() when parsing a crafted BIT_BINARY_EXT input. A remote attacker can send a specially crafted payload to cause a denial of service.
The issue causes a full BEAM virtual machine crash rather than a process-level exception, and the [safe] option to binary_to_term/2 does not prevent it.
Affected software
Erlang OTP
Debian Linux
erlang (Debian package)
Debian Linux
erlang (Debian package)
How to mitigate CVE-2026-54890
Install security update from vendor's website.
Erlang OTP - addressed in versions 17.0, 17.1, 27.3.4.15, 28.5.0.4, 29.0.4
erlang (Debian package) - update to 1:27.3.4.1+dfsg-1+deb13u3
erlang (Debian package) - update to 1:27.3.4.1+dfsg-1+deb13u3