CVE-2026-54894: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian allows denial of service via unbounded atom creation from attacker-influenced binary input. Guardian.Plu
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.
Details
Original advisory: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-54894
Referenced CVEs
| CVE | CSIRTS overview | External |
|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-54894 | coverage & exploitation status | NVD · CVE.org |
Recent advisories for Allocation of Resources
A cluster of recent advisories against the same product widens the attack surface — attackers routinely chain freshly published CVEs on one product, so review these together.
- unknownCVE-2026-55734: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ueberauth guardian (Guar…nvd · 2026-08-01
- unknownCVE-2026-55733: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian allows denial of se…nvd · 2026-08-01
- unknownCVE-2026-14539: An allocation of resources without limits vulnerability in the HTTP handler component of Googl…nvd · 2026-07-31
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- unknownCVE-2026-59248: Allocation of resources without limits vulnerability in ninenines cowlib allows an unauthentic…nvd · 2026-07-28
- unknownCVE-2026-59251: Allocation of resources without limits in Erlang/OTP public_key certificate path validation al…nvd · 2026-07-27
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