CVE-2026-54890
Fixed in a distro release EPSS <1%CVSS 8.2
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.
Products: erlang otp
Distro releases
| Release | Package | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| Debian 12 | erlang | no fix |
| Debian 13 | erlang | 1:27.3.4.1+dfsg-1+deb13u3 |
| Debian 14 | erlang | 1:29.0.4+dfsg-1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27 | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-asn1 | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-common_test | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-compiler | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-crypto | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-debugger | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-dialyzer | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-diameter | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-edoc | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-eldap | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-erl_interface | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-erts | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-et | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-eunit | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-examples | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-ftp | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-gdb-tools | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-inets | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-jinterface | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-kernel | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-megaco | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-mnesia | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-observer | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-odbc | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-os_mon | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-parsetools | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-public_key | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-reltool | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-runtime_tools | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-sasl | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-snmp | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-ssh | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-ssl | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-stdlib | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-syntax_tools | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-tftp | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-tools | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-wx | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Red Hat hummingbird 1 | erlang27-xmerl | 0:27.3.4.15-0.1.hum1 |
| Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | erlang | 1:24.2.1+dfsg-1ubuntu0.7 |
| Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | erlang | 1:25.3.2.8+dfsg-1ubuntu4.7 |
| Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | erlang | 1:27.3.4.6+dfsg-1ubuntu0.1 |
| Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS | erlang | 1:16.b.3-dfsg-1ubuntu2.2+esm2 |
| Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS | erlang | 1:18.3-dfsg-1ubuntu3.1+esm3 |
| Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS | erlang | 1:20.2.2+dfsg-1ubuntu2+esm3 |
| Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS | erlang | 1:22.2.7+dfsg-1ubuntu0.5+esm2 |
| openSUSE Tumbleweed | erlang | 28.5.0.4-1.1 |
| openSUSE Tumbleweed | erlang27 | 27.1.3-3.1 |