CVE-2026-81638 PUBLISHED

Non-canonical ULID spellings are accepted and alias to the same record in ash_double_entry

Assigner: EEF
Reserved: 07.09.2026 Published: 07.09.2026 Updated: 07.09.2026

Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding vulnerability in ash-project ash_double_entry allows an attacker to submit several distinct string spellings of the same identifier.

AshDoubleEntry.ULID renders a 128-bit ULID as 26 Crockford base-32 characters, but the first character encodes only 3 bits, so canonical values are 0 to 7. decode/1 in lib/ulid.ex masks the first character to its low 3 bits and valid?/1 accepts all 32 characters in that position, so 0..., 8..., G... and R... decode to the identical 16-byte value and resolve to the same row. When the type is exposed as a public ID over an HTTP or API boundary, an attacker-supplied ID can be spelled differently from the record it actually reads or writes, desynchronizing or bypassing string-level checks such as idempotency and deduplication keys, deny-lists, audit correlation, or signatures computed over the submitted ID.

This issue affects ash_double_entry: from 0.1.0 before 1.0.19.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N
CVSS Score: 2.1

Product Status

Vendor ash-project
Product ash_double_entry
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0.1.0 to 1.0.19 (excl.)
Vendor ash-project
Product ash_double_entry
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1e5f7ce8ff25f519c904731a29eb1258324e561a to d3e688d300a581ae214b3ca7d95ef4de63fbb050 (excl.)

Affected Configurations

Reachable only when an application exposes AshDoubleEntry.ULID as a public identifier over an HTTP or API boundary and performs string-level checks on the submitted ID (idempotency or deduplication keys, deny-lists, audit correlation, or signatures) rather than treating the value as opaque.

Credits

  • Peter Ullrich finder
  • Peter Ullrich reporter
  • Zach Daniel / Ash Project remediation developer
  • Jonatan Männchen / EEF coordinator

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-173 Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-267 Leverage Alternate Encoding