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CVE-2026-54890VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-54890: Erlang OTP · Integer Underflow (Wrap or Wraparound)

Affects Erlang OTPSource CVE Database V5

0

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 8.2 High : upgrade to dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd soon.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score
8.2High
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.
EPSS
0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 36% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch
Available – fixed in dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd, 15.2.7.11, 27.3.4.15
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 27 Jul 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponised: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq Mirage: no evidence on record.

    No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-25.

What to do

Upgrade OTP to dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd; erts to 15.2.7.11; erlang/otp to 27.3.4.15.

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
ErlangOTPAffected
  • >=15.0 <15.2.7.11
Fixed in–
ErlangOTPAffected
  • >=27.0 <27.3.4.15
Fixed in
  • dc1bf9344c0ce62717cf60866590cea0242780fd
GitHubertspkg:github/ertsOther threatsAffected
  • >=15.0 <15.2.7.11
Fixed in
  • 15.2.7.11
GitHuberlang/otppkg:github/erlang/otpOther threatsAffected
  • >=27.0 <27.3.4.15
Fixed in
  • 27.3.4.15

CPE configurations (1)

  • cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang\/otp:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

If you cannot patch yet, avoid decoding ETF data from untrusted sources using binary_to_term/1,2 or enif_binary_to_term(). The Erlang distribution protocol is not considered vulnerable in typical trusted network deployments. No mitigation via the safe option in binary_to_term/2 is effective against this issue.

Description

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.

References

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