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High · 8.2 CVE-2026-82760 EEF-CVE-2026-82760EUVD-2026-81478GHSA-q876-xr24-2mcx

Superlinear base62 decoding exhausts CPU and memory in AshAuthentication API key sign-in

Published Sep 17, 2026 · Updated Sep 17, 2026 · Assigned by EEF

Description

Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in team-alembic AshAuthentication allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust CPU and memory via an oversized base62 segment in a submitted API key.

AshAuthentication.Base.decode62/1 in lib/ash_authentication/base.ex splits its argument into one binary per character and folds it with charval62/2, which recomputes Integer.pow(62, index) at every position instead of accumulating by Horner's method, so cost grows roughly cubically in the input length. bindecode62/1 in the same module is quadratic through Integer.undigits/2 and Integer.digits/2. Neither function caps byte_size/1, and AshAuthentication.Strategy.ApiKey.SignInPreparation passes the underscore-separated segments of the submitted key straight into both, before any key lookup and without prior authentication. The surrounding rescue clauses catch exceptions, not CPU or memory exhaustion.

This issue affects ash_authentication: from 4.8.0 before 4.15.0 and from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
team-alembic ash_authentication 4.8.0 – < 4.15.0, 5.0.0-rc.0 – < 5.0.0-rc.14 4.15.0

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Hex ash_authentication >= 4.8.0, < 4.15.0 · >= 5.0.0-rc.0, < 5.0.0-rc.14 4.15.0, 5.0.0-rc.14 EEF-CVE-2026-82760

References