CVE-2026-104635

HighCVSS 8.2

Published: 09/10/2026(UTC)Updated: 15/10/2026(UTC)Translated: 09/10/2026(UTC)NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk

0.39%

31th percentile - higher than 31% of all known CVEs

Summary

The elixir-protobuf library in versions from 0.8.0 before 0.17.1 contains an uncontrolled recursion vulnerability in Protobuf.JSON.Decode. An unauthenticated remote attacker can crash the decoding process via a deeply nested JSON document when the schema contains a self-referential or cyclic message type.

Risk Assessment

An attacker can remotely trigger memory exhaustion and crash the decoding process, causing denial of service in applications that process user-supplied JSON. Confidentiality and integrity are not affected.

Recommendation

Update the protobuf library to version 0.17.1 or later. Until then, limit the depth and size of processed JSON and validate input before decoding.

Other vulnerabilities in elixir-protobuf

CVE-2026-54451High
In the Elixir protobuf library from 0.8.0 until 0.16.1, services that decode attacker-controlled protobuf bytes can be taken offline when the schema contains a self-referential or cyclic message type. The decoder recursively processes nested embedded fields without a nesting-depth limit, allowing a relatively small request to consume substantial CPU and memory and pin a BEAM scheduler. The issue is fixed in 0.16.1.

Original NVD description (English source)

Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in Protobuf.JSON.Decode in elixir-protobuf protobuf allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to crash the decoding process via a deeply nested JSON document. Any application that decodes attacker-supplied JSON with Protobuf.JSON.decode/3, Protobuf.JSON.decode!/3, or Protobuf.JSON.from_decoded/3 into a schema that contains a self-referential or cyclic message type is affected. In lib/protobuf/json/decode.ex, the embedded-message clause of decode_singular/3 recurses into internal_from_json_data/3 once per nesting level without incrementing or checking the decoder's depth counter. The depth guard increase_depth_and_maybe_throw/1 covers only the Google.Protobuf.ListValue and Google.Protobuf.Struct clauses, so the recursion_limit option has no effect on user-defined message types. Each nesting level allocates a stack frame and heap objects, and a sufficiently deep document exhausts the memory of the decoding process. Confidentiality and integrity are not affected. This issue affects protobuf: from 0.8.0 before 0.17.1.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS