Infinite loop in Erlang OTP - CVE-2026-96596
Published: October 14, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU155789
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 5.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-96596
CWE-ID: CWE-835
Exploitation vector: Local 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 an infinite loop with an unreachable exit condition in erl_tar:do_sparse_read/3 and its bundled copies when extracting GNU sparse members to disk. A remote attacker can supply a tar archive containing a crafted GNU sparse member whose sparse map ends before its real size to cause a denial of service.
Extraction with the memory option is not affected.
Affected software
Erlang OTP
How to mitigate CVE-2026-96596
Install security update from vendor's website.
Erlang OTP - update to 29.1.2