CVE-2026-43967 PUBLISHED

Quadratic fragment-name uniqueness check causes denial of service in absinthe

Assigner: EEF
Reserved: 04.05.2026 Published: 08.05.2026 Updated: 09.05.2026

Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via quadratic fragment-name uniqueness validation.

'Elixir.Absinthe.Phase.Document.Validation.UniqueFragmentNames':run/2 iterates over all fragments and for each one calls duplicate?/2, which evaluates Enum.count(fragments, &(&1.name == name)) — a full linear scan of the fragment list. The result is O(N²) comparisons per document, where N is the number of fragment definitions supplied by the caller.

Because input.fragments is built directly from the GraphQL query body, N is fully attacker-controlled. A minimum-size fragment definition is roughly 16 bytes, so a ~1 MB document carries ~60,000 fragments and forces ~3.6 × 10⁹ comparisons inside this single validation phase. No authentication, schema knowledge, or special configuration is required.

This issue affects absinthe: from 1.2.0 before 1.10.2.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 8.7

Product Status

Vendor absinthe-graphql
Product absinthe
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1.2.0 to 1.10.2 (excl.)
Vendor absinthe-graphql
Product absinthe
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0b46e3bcc06c0d3797bacd64761b908a84646c1d to 223600c520493dcaf95080af552c413099f92c9d (excl.)

Credits

  • Peter Ullrich finder
  • Curtis Schiewek remediation developer

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-229 Serialized Data Parameter Blowup