Integer Underflow Vulnerability in Erlang OTP by Erlang

CVE-2026-54890

What is CVE-2026-54890?

This vulnerability in Erlang OTP's erts modules allows for integer underflow via the BIT_BINARY_EXT tag handler in the External Term Format (ETF) decoder. When both the length and trailing-bits fields are set to zero, it leads to the computation of an unintended bitstring size. The underflow results in a surprisingly high memory allocation request, which causes a VM-level crash that cannot be intercepted by Erlang exception handling mechanisms. Applications decoding ETF from untrusted sources, as well as those utilizing the Erlang distribution protocol, may be particularly vulnerable to these memory allocation issues.

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