CVE-2026-48854 PUBLISHED

Unbounded request body accumulation causes memory exhaustion in elixir-grpc/grpc

Assigner: EEF
Reserved: 25.05.2026 Published: 15.06.2026 Updated: 16.06.2026

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-grpc grpc allows unauthenticated attackers to exhaust the BEAM's memory and crash the server by streaming a large or slow-trickle unary request body.

'Elixir.GRPC.Server.Adapters.Cowboy.Handler':read_full_body/3 (lib/grpc/server/adapters/cowboy/handler.ex) accumulates every received chunk into a single growing binary with no size cap. Additionally, when the client omits the grpc-timeout header, the per-chunk read timeout resolves to :infinity, allowing a slow-trickle client to keep the connection alive indefinitely while memory grows. A single connection is sufficient to exhaust server memory and crash the node.

This issue affects grpc from 0.3.1 before 1.0.0.

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 elixir-grpc
Product grpc
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0.3.1 to 1.0.0 (excl.)
Vendor elixir-grpc
Product grpc
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from d1abe70a6cad6dac4a3f8235d883d7c896989560 to 49e18c3ec6bb9afe2f712caad3dbab5c56a68a00 (excl.)

Credits

  • Peter Ullrich finder
  • Paulo Valente remediation developer
  • Jonatan Männchen analyst

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-130 Excessive Allocation
  • CAPEC-231 Oversized Serialized Data Payloads