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Medium · 5.9 CVE-2026-53423 EEF-CVE-2026-53423EUVD-2026-36235GHSA-43hj-fxwj-49qw

Unauthenticated denial-of-service via BEAM atom table exhaustion in membrane_mp4_plugin

Published Jun 11, 2026 · Updated Jun 12, 2026 · Assigned by EEF

Description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in membraneframework membrane_mp4_plugin allows unauthenticated denial-of-service via BEAM atom table exhaustion.

The MP4 box header parser converts each 4-byte box name to an atom using String.to_atom/1 without validation. 'Elixir.Membrane.MP4.Container.Header':parse_box_name/1 in lib/membrane_mp4/container/header.ex interns every box name encountered while 'Elixir.Membrane.MP4.Container.Header':parse/1 walks the input. BEAM atoms are never garbage-collected, so each unique attacker-controlled 4-byte name is a permanent allocation. A crafted MP4 of approximately 8 MB containing roughly 1.1 million boxes with distinct non-standard names exhausts the atom table (default ceiling around 1,048,576 atoms), aborting the entire BEAM node and taking down all applications running on it.

This issue affects membrane_mp4_plugin from 0.3.0 before 0.36.7.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
membraneframework membrane_mp4_plugin 0.3.0 – < 0.36.7 0.36.7

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Hex membrane_mp4_plugin >= 0.3.0, < 0.36.7 0.36.7 EEF-CVE-2026-53423
Hex membrane_mp4_plugin < 0.36.7 0.36.7 GHSA-43hj-fxwj-49qw

References