CVE-2026-54890
Published:July 27, 2026
Updated:August 04, 2026
Integer Underflow (Wrap or Wraparound) vulnerability in erlang otp erlang/otp (erts modules), erlang otp erts (erts modules) allows Forced Integer Overflow, Excessive Allocation. This vulnerability is associated with program files erts/emulator/beam/external.c, emulator/beam/external.c.
The BIT_BINARY_EXT tag (77) handler in the External Term Format (ETF) decoder accepts an encoding with both length and trailing-bits fields set to zero. The subsequent computation of the bitstring size underflows an unsigned integer, producing a value of roughly 2^64 that is then passed as a memory allocation size. The allocator aborts the entire node with a message such as "Cannot allocate 2305843009213693951 bytes of memory (of type binary)".
The crash is a VM-level abort, not an Erlang-level exception. It cannot be intercepted by supervision trees, by try/catch, or by passing the [safe] option to binary_to_term/2 (which only restricts atom creation and does not perform structural validation of binary encodings).
Any application that decodes ETF from untrusted sources via binary_to_term/1,2 or enif_binary_to_term() is exposed. The Erlang distribution protocol also decodes incoming terms through the same code path, but distribution is expected to run on trusted networks per the OTP Secure Coding Guidelines (DSG-011).
This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.4, OTP 28.5.0.4 and OTP 27.3.4.15, corresponding to erts from 15.0 before 17.0.4, 16.4.0.4 and 15.2.7.11.
Affected Packages
https://github.com/erlang/otp.git (GITHUB):
Affected version(s) >=OTP-28.5 <OTP-28.5.0.4Fix Suggestion:
Update to version OTP-28.5.0.4https://github.com/erlang/otp.git (GITHUB):
Affected version(s) >=OTP-29.0 <OTP-29.0.4Fix Suggestion:
Update to version OTP-29.0.4https://github.com/erlang/otp.git (GITHUB):
Affected version(s) >=OTP-27.0 <OTP-27.3.4.15Fix Suggestion:
Update to version OTP-27.3.4.15Related Resources (9)
Do you need more information?
Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
8.2
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
PRESENT
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
NONE
Vulnerable System Integrity
NONE
Vulnerable System Availability
HIGH
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
7.5
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Weakness Type (CWE)
EPSS
Base Score:
0.32