CVE-2026-54894: CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian allows denial of service via unbounded atom creation from attacker-influenced binary input. Guardian.Plug.Keys derives connection and session namespace keys by passing arbitrary binaries to String.to_atom/1. base_key/1 in lib/guardian/plug/keys.ex converts any binary into the atom :"guardian_<input>", and the derived helpers claims_key/1, resource_key/1, and token_key/1 create a second atom on top of that. key_from_other/1 likewise converts a regex-captured binary through String.to_atom/1. The public specs advertise String.t() as a valid argument, so passing a string is documented usage, and higher-level entry points such as Guardian.Plug.current_token(conn, key: key) thread the caller-supplied key straight into these functions. String.to_atom/1 creates a brand-new atom for every previously unseen binary, atoms are never garbage collected, and the BEAM atom table is fixed at roughly 1,048,576 entries by default. An application that routes attacker-influenced data (a tenant identifier, header, or other request input) into a Guardian key therefore mints one permanent atom per distinct value. A modest stream of varied, unauthenticated input permanently consumes the atom table and crashes the BEAM node, taking down every application running on it. This issue affects guardian: from 0.1.0 before 2.4.1.
CVE-2026-54894: CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian
Description
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian allows denial of service via unbounded atom creation from attacker-influenced binary input. Guardian.Plug.Keys derives connection and session namespace keys by passing arbitrary binaries to String.to_atom/1. base_key/1 in lib/guardian/plug/keys.ex converts any binary into the atom :"guardian_<input>", and the derived helpers claims_key/1, resource_key/1, and token_key/1 create a second atom on top of that. key_from_other/1 likewise converts a regex-captured binary through String.to_atom/1. The public specs advertise String.t() as a valid argument, so passing a string is documented usage, and higher-level entry points such as Guardian.Plug.current_token(conn, key: key) thread the caller-supplied key straight into these functions. String.to_atom/1 creates a brand-new atom for every previously unseen binary, atoms are never garbage collected, and the BEAM atom table is fixed at roughly 1,048,576 entries by default. An application that routes attacker-influenced data (a tenant identifier, header, or other request input) into a Guardian key therefore mints one permanent atom per distinct value. A modest stream of varied, unauthenticated input permanently consumes the atom table and crashes the BEAM node, taking down every application running on it. This issue affects guardian: from 0.1.0 before 2.4.1.
CVSS v4.0
Score 6.9medium
Affected software
cpe:2.3:a:ueberauth:guardian:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*Run on your own infrastructure? Check whether these packages are installed with threat-finder — our free open-source scanner.
Weaknesses
Technical Details
- Data Version
- 5.2
- Assigner Short Name
- EEF
- Date Reserved
- 2026-06-16T10:47:13.915Z
- Cvss Version
- 4.0
- State
- PUBLISHED
- Remediation Level
- null
Threat ID: 6a6e3f8dbf32cb7a34232d1c
Added to database: 08/01/2026, 18:48:45 UTC
Last updated: 08/01/2026, 18:48:45 UTC
Views: 1
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