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Fencer Intel
high 8.2

CVE-2026-65634 json

Superlinear CPU denial of service in Erlang/OTP ASN.1 OBJECT IDENTIFIER decoder

published last mo. modified 14h ago also EUVD-2026-84340 , GHSA-qghx-23m5-r55m

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository erlang/otp. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
8.2
version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 18%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the Erlang/OTP asn1 OBJECT IDENTIFIER decoder allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to cause denial of service by sending a crafted OID during the TLS handshake.

The BER OID decoder asn1rtt_ber:dec_subidentifiers/3 in lib/asn1/src/asn1rtt_ber.erl and the equivalent PER helper asn1rtt_per_common:dec_subidentifiers/3 in lib/asn1/src/asn1rtt_per_common.erl accumulate a base-128 subidentifier into an unbounded integer using (Av bsl 7) + H per continuation byte. Each shift and addition on the growing accumulator is linear in the number of bits already accumulated, giving quadratic total work in the size of a single subidentifier. The JER helper asn1rtt_jer:json2oid/1 in lib/asn1/src/asn1rtt_jer.erl exhibits the same class of unbounded-integer parsing when decoding a dot-separated OID from JSON. A DER-encoded OBJECT IDENTIFIER with one very large arc (approximately 262 KB of continuation bytes) consumes roughly 13 seconds of CPU on typical hardware.

The vulnerable decoder is generated into every ASN.1 module that contains an OBJECT IDENTIFIER, including OTP-PUB-KEY which is reached during X.509 certificate parsing via public_key:pkix_decode_cert/2. This decoder runs before any signature or trust chain verification, so any Erlang service that parses peer TLS certificates is exposed: the default for TLS clients (which always parse the server certificate) and for mutual-TLS servers (which parse client certificates).

This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/asn1/src/asn1rtt_ber.erl, lib/asn1/src/asn1rtt_per_common.erl and lib/asn1/src/asn1rtt_jer.erl and program routines asn1rtt_ber:dec_subidentifiers/3, asn1rtt_per_common:dec_subidentifiers/3 and asn1rtt_jer:json2oid/1.

This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 before OTP 27.3.4.18, OTP 28.5.0.7, and OTP 29.1.1, corresponding to asn1 from 3.0 before 5.3.4.3, 5.4.3.1, and 5.5.2. Whether OTP before OTP 17.0, corresponding to asn1 before 3.0, is affected is unknown.

Patch / fix

  • Erlang OTP 5.3.4.3, 5.4.3.1, 5.5.2, 27.3.4.18, 28.5.0.7, 29.1.1
  • erlang Debian 13 1:27.3.4.1+dfsg-1+deb13u4
  • erlang Debian 14 1:29.1.1+dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-65634

  • erlang Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 1:24.2.1+dfsg-1ubuntu0.8
  • erlang Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 1:25.3.2.8+dfsg-1ubuntu4.8
  • erlang Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 1:27.3.4.6+dfsg-1ubuntu0.2
  • erlang Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 1:16.b.3-dfsg-1ubuntu2.2+esm3
  • erlang Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 1:18.3-dfsg-1ubuntu3.1+esm4
  • erlang Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 1:20.2.2+dfsg-1ubuntu2+esm4
  • erlang Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS 1:22.2.7+dfsg-1ubuntu0.5+esm3

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-65634

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • erlang Azure Linux 3.0 26.2.5.21-8

azure linux advisories AZL-103422

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
last mo.

Exploit prediction

0.27% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 18% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 8.2 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 4.0 8.2 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/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 products

  • Erlang OTP

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

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.

The maintainers of erlang/otp published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.

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