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Fencer Intel
critical 9.2

CVE-2026-48853 json

Remote code execution and denial of service via unsafe Erlang term deserialization in elixir-grpc/grpc

published 4mo ago modified 17d ago also EEF-CVE-2026-48853 , EUVD-2026-37015 , GHSA-grp7-v8xh-rj7h

cvss
9.2
version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.8%
EPSS 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 56%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Deserialization of Untrusted Data and Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerabilities in elixir-grpc grpc allow unauthenticated attackers to crash the BEAM node via atom table exhaustion and, when a decoded term flows into a call site that invokes it, achieve remote code execution on the server.

'Elixir.GRPC.Codec.Erlpack':decode/2 (lib/grpc/codec/erlpack.ex) calls :erlang.binary_to_term/1 on the raw gRPC message body without the :safe option, no size bound, and no type guard. Any unauthenticated peer that sends a request with Content-Type: application/grpc+erlpack can send a crafted payload that mints arbitrary new atoms (which are never garbage-collected, exhausting the bounded atom table and crashing the VM) or that encodes a fun term which, if applied anywhere downstream, executes attacker-controlled code inside the server process.

This issue affects grpc: from 0.4.0 before 1.0.0.

Patch / fix

  • hex grpc 1.0.0
  • elixir-grpc grpc 1.0.0

Is CVE-2026-48853 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-48853 updated cvss 9.8

grpc: elixir-grpc grpc: Remote Code Execution and Denial of Service via Deserialization of Untrusted Data

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 grpc, grpc-cli, grpc-plugins, python3-grpcio
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
4mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.78% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 56% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/elixir-grpc/grpc/security/advisories/GHSA-grp7-v8xh-rj7h referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 9.2 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 4.0 9.2 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
hex grpc
>=0.4.0, <1.0.0
1.0.0

Affected products

  • elixir-grpc grpc

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.