CVE-2026-42793
HighSummary
A vulnerability in absinthe-graphql allows unauthenticated denial of service via atom table exhaustion when parsing attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL. Multiple Blueprint.Draft.convert/2 implementations in Absinthe's SDL language modules call String.to_atom/1 on attacker-controlled names, leading to resource exhaustion.
Risk Assessment
Organizations may experience application outages, leading to service availability interruptions. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to take down the entire Erlang VM node.
Recommendation
It is recommended to implement resource limits or throttling when parsing GraphQL SDL and to monitor and restrict the number of unique names passed to the parser. Additionally, consider implementing protections against DoS attacks.
Other vulnerabilities in absinthe-graphql
Original NVD description (English source)
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via atom table exhaustion when parsing attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL. Multiple Blueprint.Draft.convert/2 implementations in Absinthe's SDL language modules call String.to_atom/1 on attacker-controlled names from parsed GraphQL SDL documents, including directive names, field names, type names, and argument names. Because atoms are never garbage-collected and the BEAM atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), each unique name permanently consumes one slot. An attacker can exhaust the atom table by submitting SDL documents containing enough unique names, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node. Any application that passes attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL through Absinthe's parser is exposed — for example, a schema-upload endpoint, a federation gateway that ingests remote SDL, or any developer tool that