Description
Improper Validation of Specified Quantity in Input vulnerability in the Elixir standard library's JSON module allows an unauthenticated attacker who supplies a JSON document to cause a denial of service through CPU and memory exhaustion.
JSON.decode/1 and JSON.decode!/1 convert each integer literal with erlang:binary_to_integer/1 and do not bound its length. A literal of one million digits decodes successfully but costs 100 to 300 times as much CPU as a string of the same length, so one request body of a few megabytes holds a scheduler for about a second. A literal of more than about 1.29 million digits raises SystemLimitError. Applications generated by phx.new decode request bodies with JSON in Plug.Parsers, before routing and authentication.
This issue affects elixir: from 1.18.0-rc.0 before 1.18.6, from 1.19.0-rc.0 before 1.19.7, and from 1.20.0-rc.0 before 1.20.5.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| elixir-lang | elixir | 1.18.0-rc.0 – < 1.18.6, 1.19.0-rc.0 – < 1.19.7, 1.20.0-rc.0 – < 1.20.5 | 1.18.6 |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | elixir-lang | No fix yet | — |
| Debian 13 | elixir-lang | No fix yet | — |
Ubuntu
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | elixir | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 16.04 LTS | elixir | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 14.04 LTS | elixir | No fix yet | — |
References
- Unbounded integer parsing in JSON.decode/1 enables CPU and memory exhaustion denial of service in Elixir vendor-advisory related
- EEF CNA record for CVE-2026-115274 related
- OSV record EEF-CVE-2026-115274 related
- Introducing commit 793c114 in elixir-lang/elixir related
- Fix commit c81f122 in elixir-lang/elixir patch
- Fix commit 7154e87 in elixir-lang/elixir patch
- Fix commit cd158ef in elixir-lang/elixir patch
- Fix commit ee5cc23 in elixir-lang/elixir patch